Amsterdam five-piece Altın Gün will play one Melbourne headline show in March, plus two days at WOMADelaide.
Clear some floor space on Johnston Street, because Altın Gün are bringing their bağlama-led Turkish psych to The Night Cat.
Altın Gün’s Melbourne show on 2 March is one of only three Australian headline gigs, with Sydney’s Metro Theatre and Brisbane’s The Triffid taking the other two. After that, the Amsterdam five-piece heads to WOMADelaide for 7 and 8 March before crossing the Tasman for two days at WOMAD Aotearoa in New Plymouth.
Altın Gün Australian tour
- 2 March – The Night Cat, Melbourne
- 4 March – Metro Theatre, Sydney
- 5 March – The Triffid, Brisbane
- 7 March – WOMADelaide, Adelaide
- 8 March – WOMADelaide, Adelaide
- 12 March – WOMAD Aotearoa, New Plymouth, NZ
- 14 March – WOMAD Aotearoa, New Plymouth, NZ
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
Since their 2018 debut, On, the band have been plugging the bağlama, a long-necked Turkish lute, into wah-wah guitar, organ and heavy bass. Their blueprint comes from the 1970s Anatolian rock of Barış Manço and Erkin Koray. That approach has earned them a Grammy nomination and support slots for Tame Impala and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.
Out in February, Garip is built entirely from songs by Neşet Ertaş, the Turkish singer, lyricist and bağlama player who died in 2012. Ertaş spent decades carrying the old ashik tradition of travelling folk poets into modern Turkish music, writing about love, longing and ordinary life. Altın Gün’s versions of his 10 songs pile on funk-rock, slide guitar and synths, with string arrangements played by the Stockholm Studio Orchestra.
For vocalist and bağlama player Erdinç Eçevit, the record goes straight back to childhood. His parents come from the same part of Turkey as Ertaş, and his grandfather had the Ertaş cassettes playing all day when Eçevit was five or six, years before he could follow the lyrics.
Artist, promoter and Spotify presales open at 10am local time on 20 October. General tickets go on sale at 10am on 21 October, and The Night Cat is a much tighter room than the festival fields the band will be playing that same fortnight.
For more information, head here.
