The Trip. Psychedelic Music from the Hippie Trail

— Pt. 2/4 From Turkey to Nepal

A
İskender Doğan — Kocadım Günden Güne 3’03
Koma Wetan — Xacah 6’40

B
Noet — Tahobab 5’21
Soyol Erdene — For Kindly Deeds 4’46
Binod Syangden — Malai Timra Ankha Harule 3’14

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…

With “Pt. 1/4-From Italy to Turkey” you have been travelling from Italy via Hungary, Slovenia, Greece, and Lebanon to Turkey.
With “Pt. 2/4-From Turkey to Nepal” you will be travelling from Turkey via Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia to Nepal.
“Pt. 3/4-Picnic in Pakistan” and “Pt. 4/4-From Indonesia to Singapore” will follow in 2016.

“Pt. 1/4-From Italy to Turkey” has already been released in May 2015.

Compiled by the curator of “Bosporus Bridges Vol. 2,” “Saz Beat,” and “Mount Olivet Inspirational Choir,” on Corvo Records’ sublabel Global Pop First Wave.
All tracks have been restored and remastered for full sonic impact at Calyx Mastering, Berlin.

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”

The great trek eastwards as documented on The Trip: Psychedelic Music From The Hippie Trail continues with the arrival of the second part of this unique musical pilgrimage. Available as a vinyl-only limited edition release, From Turkey To Nepal (★★★★, CORVO LP) covers the second leg of the journey whose overland route takes us from Turkey through Kurdistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia to Nepal. Musically this pathway of discovery takes us from the oddball earful of crazy saxophone, crooning vocals, sing-along choruses and handclaps that is Iskender Dogan’s ‘Kocadim Gunden Gune’ via seductively mellow shades of spiritual and folk pop to the plaintive Nepalese fusion sounds of Binod Synangden.
— Grahame Bent, Shindig! Magazine, #51, 10/2015