Tolga Fidan – Gaijin (VA033)

Tolga Fidan, in his last tasty impartment on Vakant before his solo debut album due out in October of this year, brings 2 full sides of the most expansive mind and body moving you will find outside of a gypsy circle on Jupiter.

If techno has a jazz fusion subgenre, A-side ‘Gaijin’ is it, making Tolga our own personal Chick Corea with a strobe light. With the prerequisite thickness and authority we have come to take for granted from the Vakant camp, “Gaijin” goes to space while sporting an afro and 15 piece avant-garde jazz band. 15 minutes later you remember the trip but have no idea where you’ve landed.

B-side ‘Drunk Rotations’ loses a few members of the band due to cosmic radiation. Remaining members cut their parts into smaller morsels while Chick aka Tolga applies the icing by way of piano. Then the stowaway horn section appears. Where did the modular synth fit, and who brought the Theremin? These are questions for the Mystics. Yet in all the detail of ‘Drunk Rotations’ you never lose the jack or your place on the cosmic dance floor.