Altın Gün (meaning Golden Day in Turkish) is a Turkish psychedelic rock band based in Amsterdam. It was founded by bassist Jasper Verhulst in 2016 when he posted an ad on Facebook looking for Turkish musicians. Their style has been described as “psychedelic” with a “dirty blend of funk rhythms, wah-wah guitars and analogue organs”. Altın Gün also performs psychedelic rock covers of Turkish folk music. Both the band’s vocalists, Merve Dasdemir and Erdinc Ecevit Yildiz, are of Turkish origin, while the other four members are Dutch.
The band captured the world’s attention with their 2018 debut, On, and quickly earned a prestigious Grammy Award nomination for “Best World Album” with their second album Gece which was released in 2019. The band’s first American tour commenced in mid 2019. The band recently performed three historic collaborations with the Netherlands’ world famous Metropole Orkest.
Renowned for their dizzyingly hypnotic live performances, Altın Gün has spent much of this past year lighting up stages around the world, including sold out headline tours in North America, Europe, and the UK, along with show-stopping sets at such top international festivals as Indio, CA’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the Netherlands’ Best Kept Secret, Barcelona, Spain’s Primavera Sound, and Reykjavik, Iceland’s Iceland Airwaves.
The new album Aşk sees Altın Gün veering away from the electronic, synth-drenched sound of their critically acclaimed 2021 albums Âlem and Yol, to capture all the infectious power and urgency of the Amsterdam-based band’s famously propulsive live performances. Recorded using vintage equipment and techniques, the album’s ten groundbreaking tracks all represent visionary new readings of traditional Turkish folk tunes, revealing how these ancient songs remain eternally resonant and ripe for reinterpretation. “These songs have been covered so many times, always,” says vocalist/keyboardist Merve Dasdemir. “But not really in psychedelic pop versions,” adds bassist Jasper Verhulst. “It’s definitely connecting more with a live sound – almost like a live album. We, as a band, just going into a rehearsal space together and creating music together instead of demoing at home.”
Rooted in antiquity yet blazing with contemporary relevance and vitality, Aşk also includes Altın Gün’s dazzling reinvention of “Lelim Ley,” a classic song of lost love and exile available now at all DSPs and streaming services. Recently named as “Today’s Top Tune” by the influential KCRW, “Lelim Ley” features music composed by renowned Turkish musician, author, poet, and politician Zülfü Livaneli and lyrics written by the late Turkish novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948). Taken from Ali’s 1937 short story, “Ses,” “Lelim Ley” was joined by music composed by Livaneli in 1975 and has since been embraced as one of the most well-known and beloved songs among Turkish people everywhere.
