Review: Tolga Fidan: All Pressure is Relief EP

Label: Vakant (Official) (Myspace)
Artist: Tolga Fidan (Discogs) (Myspace) (Last. FM)

A-Side All Pleasure Is Relief (Sample)
B-Side For Our Fathers (Sample)

If genres were cubicles, Tolga Fidan would knock them down turning the place into a sleek spacey lounge with matching exotic seating on his third EP at one of Berlin’s flagship minimal record labels, Vakant.

A-side constructs a pleasure inducing collage of percussion. Snippets of female voices move the track forward as its individual bits mesh together in anticipation of a lush Spanish-like melody. Laid back yet groovy, like a cool Sunday sunrise on a balcony overlooking a foreign land, the piece leisurely picks up the pace aggregating layers of sunrays, voices, strings, and eventually a chunkier nonetheless graceful groove.

B-side uses the previous side’s worldly essence and takes it much further along, harder and deeper. Perhaps like a mid-morning day hike in that favorite exotic getaway of yours, somewhere out there... (post pics in the comments area if you know what I’m talking about). TF takes along a harmonica for the journey to help cope with the tribal drumming on his way up the hill. The strings are more prominent here and the mournful siren wails towards the end tops the track off in an ever-rising exotic tribal trail.

Tolga Fidan cares little for musical boundaries, and for that he deserves much respect. His work somehow manages to show us 'worldly ethnic music' through the techy-minimal looking glass in ways that both sides would and should appreciate. His style perfectly fits the Vakant motto of standing for the spaces left between the beats.