Yippee! Two of our favorite musicians are friends! In 2017, Derya Yıldırım and Fee Kürten met through the music theatre production “Iphigenie” in Hamburg. Yıldırım, is a trained musician. She sings and plays piano, guitar, bağlama, oud, and saxophone. As head of the five-piece band Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, she’s an international mover and shaker in the business of psychedelic-Turkish folk music. (We’d suggest listening ASAP!) Kürten, on the other hand, was trained as a visual artist and in turn operates under the name Tellavision. She makes equally-highly-recommended quirky art pop of the American variety. Tellavision is “about opening up for something you don’t know yet or even don’t like because you just don’t know about it”, describes the interdisciplinary artist. Accordingly, we’d imagine she probably encountered Yıldırım’s bağlama playing (we’ll help you out here: we’re talking about a long-necked, round-bellied lute) with the utmost openness and eagerness to experiment. When we think about it, it makes sense that the pair’s seemingly vastly different tonal socializations found their way to each other—and they did so on wax, too, in a single on the label of the Hamburg record store institution Hanseplatte. After all, both artists are dedicated, in their own ways, to free, meandering styles of music. With their powers combined, psychedelic pop from different geographies and epochs fuse effortlessly and spellbindingly. It’s a match!

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