Anadol - Felicita

Uzun Havalar, Anadol's 'breakout' (so to speak) record from 2019 was quite something, a unique meeting of Turkish identity and tradition with contemporary experimental processes and production. A few years on, and a good few hundred listens deep, i'm still uncertain if i've anything else quite like it. Felicita proves that record was no fluke, while taking some quite large steps in different directions. Ablamin Gozleri, the shortest track and situated dead centre in the middle of the record, is about as close as Gözen Atila (Anadol herself) gets to her past, deadpan vocals atop a looping casiotone-generated Middle Eastern melody. Either side, we're in mostly new territory, a kraut-indebted, jazz-referencing psychedelic synth exploration situated at the lesser touched ends of form and convention, only the closing Felicita Lale really making any concessions to the pop extrovertism she's clearly always got in the tank. Expect the unexpected and all that, though nothing quite prepares for the 15 minute Istasyon Plajinda Bir Tren Batti, an industrial-pulsed, free jazz melter sui generis that i'll be bending my head around all year. Atila recruited a number of jazz-schooled musicians to make this record, and obviously their pedigree shows, but what's most obvious here is the singular vision required to construct a work like Felicita, so seemingly free is it of obvious peers or prevailing trends. Felicita translates as happiness, though there's a deeper etymological significance - derived from the Latin adjective 'felix', which referred to divinely inspired productivity. So it is written.