Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Derya Yıldırım is no easy artist to pin down, and neither is Yarın Yoksa, the new release from her and Grup Şimşek, the ensemble she leads made up of keyboardist Graham Mushnik, guitarist and bassist Antonin Voyant, and drummer Helen Wells. With a title meaning “if there is no tomorrow”, it’s devoted to yesterdays and nows.
Born into Hamburg’s sizeable Turkish diasporic community, Yıldırım draws on folk songs and themes from her ancestral homeland and her own deeply personal sentiments and experiences–of love, loss, and oppression–while winding together bağlama melodies and funky grooves that offer irresistible retro touches to a gripping album.
At the forefront, Yıldırım’s is a tremendously emotional presence. She sends sweet, wistful sighs through lovestruck “Cool Hand” with the ease of a 1960s soul singer. On “Yakamoz”, her melismas are almost wails as she laments a lost home. She mimics a ney, or perhaps the song’s titular birds, with each melancholy chorus throughout “İstanbul’un Kuşları”.
With lute-like bağlama in hands throughout, Yıldırım always roots her performances in Turkish styles that range from older traditions to 1970s Anatolian rock while the rest of Grup Şimşek matches her many moods with ease. Mushnik’s neon synths and Voyant’s electric gliding add vivid colors to lively folk song “Hop Bico”. Wells is masterful, jazzy and subtle throughout.
All these elements come together under the supervision of veteran producer Leon Michels, whose flair for the rhythmic, dramatic, and soulful (as seen in his work leading the band El Michels Affair, among many other projects) takes fresh form here with the group. It’s a cosmopolitan dream in which Yıldırım stays true to her roots.
An impressive range of sounds makes each track feel exciting. Single “Direne Direne”, a protest song with sincere heat and serious funk, is perhaps the catchiest standout. The opposite here is instrumental “Yüz Yüze”, a minute and a half of rippling, blissed-out haze. Energetically, most tracks fall somewhere in between, with “Ceylan” at perhaps the perfect midpoint, existential tension and gentle reverb in a wondrous balance. A final unexpected twist comes in the form of closing track “Güneş”, a thoughtful, introspective piece of poetry unlike anything else on Yarın Yoksa that brings the album to its eponymous focus of unknown futures.
To be clear, none of these people or the things they make need to be pinned down to enjoy them. Each successive piece of Yarın Yoksa complicates any attempt to categorize the record, but adds to the overall brilliance. Derya Yıldırım is a revelation, an artist with the kind of (literal, figurative) voice that makes legends. There’s a familiarity to the music she makes with Grup Şimşek, but there’s nothing overwrought here regarding nostalgia.
Yıldırım finds deep meaning in everything she does here, whether because of connections to family and place or because of relevance to life now; probably, in most cases, it’s at least a little of both in play. For all the recognizable musical elements on Yarın Yoksa, this record has a distinct place in pop.