Televizyon, an older thang still resonating
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You have to get that INGENIOUS IDEA to take the background sounds of the 80’s of your Turkisch homeland as material to work on with accomplished improvisers and create powerful glittery sound waves from it. Amsterdam based vocalist Sanem Kalfa DID IT joining forces with three mighty creative powerhouses: keyboardist Marta Warelis, drummer Sun Mi Hong, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten.
Kalfa on the spot caughtbrought-SOMEthing with band members who KNEW-what-to-DO – brilliantly a la moment. Pushing it to unbelievable heights already in their second concert ever (the first one was at WORM, Rotterdam, last year)
And what was this SOMETHING?
The group’s name is the Turkish word for TV, hm. TVs were running in the past (and presently too) permanently flooding people’s living spaces not only with a stream of pixels but also haunting around sounds, soundtracks of people’s everyday life.
It was not that the musicians borrowed from it to noodle-doodle along and around it a bit or mixmax it. No, they wildly enriched the catchy sketchy input of Kalfa to shoot tattering rubber balls into the sky, let jump dancing snakes out of the ground and shoot wildly circling twirling energy salvos into space. This happened in astonishing dense real time creation = improvisation.
It doesn’t went the distortion or circumlocution way. It rather was a heavy concoction emerging from deeper layers‘ of the simple figurations they took off from – a kind of conjuring sound mining. It was sheer astonishing how they drove each other up from/in the moment via different interconnecting axes concerted by Kalfa’s wildly whirling spirit. It was mostly FINDING in the natural phantasy zone, not searching. …The only obstacle were the fixed chairs in the concert hall. It was not only a question of getting carried away but of natural instinct for the next blooming realm.
The concert took place June 29, 2024, at Amsterdam BIMhuis
P.S. : Televizyon came forth from a commission of SPACE IS THE PLACE instigated by a specification of Tim Sprangers “To do something musical with a youth memory”