The Trip. Psychedelic Music from the Hippie Trail

— Pt. 1/4 From Italy to Turkey

A
I Delfini — Fate Come Noi 1:41
Szörényi Levente, Szörenyi Szabolcs, Illés Zenezkar — Eltávozott Nap 4:20
Kameleoni — Gdje Si Ljubavi 2:12
ΒΑΣΙΛΗ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΑΔΗ-ΤΤΥΘΑΓΟΡΑ — ΓΙΑ ΝΑ ΓΙΝΩ ΕΓΩ ΚΥΡΙΑ 3:09

B
Melhem Barakat & Georgette Sayegh — Belghi Kull Mawaidi (instr.) 3:57
Parla Şenol — Şu Başima Gelenler 2:47
Erkut Taçkın — Sorsam Ki 3:12

Expect unexpected music from the 1960s and 1970s, mixing Western and Eastern elements, remapping your knowledge of pop music along the way. Hear Italian shouters, East-European freak beat, Anatolian rock, Kurdish spiritual pop, Uzbek folk pop, Pakistani soundtracks, Nepalese folk beats, Mongolian pop, Indian Bollywood scores, Malaysian rock’n_roll, Philippine surf pop, Singaporean dream pop and many sounds more for all lovers of the danceable, the mind-expansive, and the sure-fire hits.
Come on and take the trip…

Pt. 1/4 – From Italy to Turkey takes you from Italy via Hungary, Slovenia, Greece, and Lebanon to Turkey. Compiled by the curator of “Bosporus Bridges Vol. 2,” “Saz Beat,” and “Mount Olivet Inspirational Choir,” on Corvo Records’ sublabel Global Pop First Wave.

To my surprise, Klaus, a record dealer at the Leopoldplatz fleamarket in Berlin, knew about Anatolian Rock when I told him about the Bosporus Brigdes compilations. He told me that, in his hippie days in the beginning of the 1970s, he had hitchhiked to Istanbul to make his way from the Pudding Shop Café to the Far East. That is how the idea was born to re-create a soundtrack for the Hippie Trail, the trail of the psychedelic hippies from Europe to Asia.
The result: a series of four 12″ records, called “The Trip”. What could the travellers have heard back in the days? Especially: which previously unknown sorts of music, combining Western and Eastern elements and thus establishing new styles of pop music? For some years now, thanks to many re-releases of some labels interested in historical developments, pop music history tends to be re-mapped. Instead of focusing on a tiny number of old centers, a new multipolar view has emerged: besides the classics of the Anglo-American realm, other pop music styles, which combine local and global elements, have been given more attention. Pop music history is one thing, hybrid pop music history another. For sure the latter cannot be thought without the impulses of Anglo-American pop music, nevertheless it is a music of its own kind, being more and more considered and recognized as such due to the growing influence of post-colonial ways of thinking. The series of “The Trip” shares this line of thinking. The trip starts in Italy with almost familiar sounding rock music, and travelling from there to the East, to less well-known shores of familiar-unfamiliar hybrid music, due to the mixes of global with local elements. What it so special about it, is the exceptional musical versatility, which characterizes the musical modernity in non-Western countries.
Holger Lund, curator of the series “The Trip”

All tracks have been restored and remastered for full sonic impact at Calyx Mastering, Berlin.

Pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies, rendering this vinyl artefact an instant collector’s item, this is the first in a series of four LPs documenting the kind of musical exotica that would have been encountered by travellers journeying along the fabled hippy trail of the ’60s and ’70s. The track-listing reflects the geographical progression of the trek eastwards across the European mainland to India – setting off from Italy we stop off in Hungary, Slovenia, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey and, not surprisingly, the further east we venture the more progressively out there the sounds become. This is a quest that takes us from the Anglo-American garage of Italy’s I Delfini through Hungarian folk-psych and impossibly groovy bazouki-fied Hellenic pop before the mind-expanding motherlode kicks in when we arrive in Turkey to the strains of Parla Scenol’s ‘Su Basima Gelenler’. Walk this way if you’re a seeker whose path requires vintage audio enlightenment.
— Grahame Bent, Shindig #49

Auch in meinem Heimatort Losenstein/Oberösterreich gab es Aussteiger, die den Weg per Autostop nach Indien nahmen. Als Afghanistan noch ein weltoffenes Land war. Holger Lund startet mit dieser »Hippie Trail« -Serie eine notwendige historische Dokumentation auf 12″-Vinyl. Denn Westzentrismus lässt in der Regel leider unberücksichtigt, welch tolle hybride Musik in den 1960er/1970er-Jahren entlang der Routen nach Asien gemacht wurde. Klarerweise liefert anglo-amerikanische Rockmusik die Vorgabe, jedoch wurden lokale Idiome einbezogen und hat gerade dieser Touch des Exotischen die Songs Frische bewahren lassen. Ohne jetzt in Details einzugehen sei vermerkt, dass Teil 1 mit sechs bislang unbekannten Bands/Interpreten von Italien über Jugoslawien (Teilrepublik Slowenien), Ungarn, Griechenland bis ins anatolische Kurdistan und den Libanon führt. Nicht umsonst nennt Lund in den Liner Notes die Compilation »Bosporus Bridges« als Impulsgeber. Zu hören ist farbenprächtiger Psychedelic Rock, der eine lokale Note keineswegs ausspart.
East meets West, ohne Berührungsängste.
— Alfred Pranzl, Skug #103