10.
Les Mogul- Danses Et Rhythmes De La Turquie D’hier A Aujourd’hui
They’re a Turkish band from the late sixties, early seventies. I believe they did a great deal of work on the more psychedelic stuff by Selda Bagcan, who’s also incredible. But I believe this is their first album. Effectively this record is an exploration of traditional Turkish rhythms and traditional Turkish dance. So it’s all acoustic instruments for the most part, and it’s so beautifully recorded. It’s also a record that I’ve often used to test sound systems, because of how clean it is and how precise the production is. It’s all acoustic instruments so it’s all so warm and vibrant, and like I said it’s an exploration of these very traditional song structures with traditional Turkish instruments, save for a couple of sort of psychedelic songs on the record. It’s just absolutely beautiful. I fell in love with Turkish music initially through the Selda Bagcan reissue, when I had no idea what Turkish music was, least of all Turkish psychedelic music. That kind of opened a chasm in which I did a great deal of exploration. And Les Mogul kept coming up, they were this band that were in the scene and associated with a lot of other bands and a great band in their own right. Most of their records tend to skew towards the psychedelic and even slightly experimental, but this album is very traditional and just stunningly beautiful.
