183
BaBa ZuLa will launch XXX on September twenty fifth through Glitterbeat. Three many years after forming in Istanbul, the band have made a file that runs to a exact half-hour and 30 seconds — certainly one of their most targeted statements but, formed from shapeshifting rhythms, remodeled saz textures, analogue electronics and the deep grooves which have run by means of their work since 1996.
The primary single, Kutsal Zeytin Halayı, is out now alongside a visualiser. A sunbaked motorik trance, it folds the band’s Anatolian psych roots into their lengthy experimental streak, with Murat and Esma Ertel’s intertwined vocals carrying the message. The tune frames the current as a battle between nature and company techno-fascism, and it takes nature’s aspect, celebrating the olive tree as a sacred image throughout ‘civilizations, mythologies, and religions’.
“This time we targeted on Mom Nature,” Esma Ertel says. “We see nature underneath fixed strain. We need to stand on the aspect of those that defend it.”
XXX strikes between instrumental excursions, exploratory taksims and authentic texts that pull folklore, city life, ecology and resistance into the band’s personal orbit. İklim Tamkan (synthesizer, organ) and Eylül Güntekin (double bass) visitor, widening the palette with out disturbing the group’s unmistakable language.
BaBa ZuLa have spent thirty years swerving trend — collaborators have included Mad Professor, Can’s Jaki Liebezeit and Warren Ellis — and nonetheless sound stressed. “We stay in Istanbul and we create music that grows from this place,” Murat Ertel says. “That is what provides it authenticity.”
XXX (September twenty fifth, 2026) Glitterbeat
Pre-order on Bandcamp: https://baba-zula.bandcamp.com/album/xxx
DSPs: https://idol-io.ffm.to/xxx
