KIRINARDI

I've been waiting for a long time to Gevende to finally release their third album. After the previous phenomenal Sen Balik Deglisin Ki which I consider to be one of the best and my most special albums in my collection, I was wondering how would they follow that album and will they keep the same high quality. Well first of all they didn't, but listening to the album I'm not sure they were going for the same ambitious kind of songwriting. The songs this time are shorter and bear a much simpler approach, although not straight forward in any way, it doesn't require your full attention to fully understand the album.

Gevende's beautiful and lush trademark sound is still intact, the instrumentation on top of the basic instruments include trumpet, violin, viola, saxophone, flugelhorn and synths, so all compositions as always sound rich and lovely. The music is less rocky this time, guitars stay in the backround for the most part and just add to the rich sound. The compositions are more in a song format rather than a development of ideas, this is of course not a bad thing it just brings the overall feeling that this effort is less progressive. The progressive element remains in the boundaries of the songs and is usually reflected by various instruments and their beautiful, diverse and rich sound.

Gevende's strength as always lies in the song atmosphere, the band has become masters of creating those captivating and dreamy soundscapes, I love how they easily mix their ethnic influences with some smooth cool jazz, mostly done with the most beautiful trumpet sounds you'll ever hear, another strong side of the band is the vocals which are always pleasant sung in their native tongue and also what I believe to be Kurdish. There are two instrumentals here which makes the album to sound a bit more progressive Tophanede Güneşli Günler and Saroyan. What ends the album are a couple of more upbeat or should I say rocky compositions, strangely placed right at the end, until that part the album is quite pastoral. Especially check out the closing track Vertigo which sounds the most progressive tune out of the album and is mostly instrumental, too bad it's too short.

So overall this is with no doubt a good album, the material is good but I'm definitely not blown away by anything. This is a good album to close your eyes and relax to, like having someone gently caressing your face or giving you a foot massage. Don't expect anything daring, demanding or out of the box like in their previous album, but if you're already a fan of the band this could be another good addition to your collection just know what you're getting. 3 stars.