PUBLICA LIVES

by EVENT FABRIC

UMUT ADAN

NEXT SHOWS

July,17 Colours Of Ostrava, Czechia Colours of Ostrava 2026
July,24 Gümüşlük Music Festival, Bodrum,Türkiye

Born in Istanbul, in an apartment building where five different faiths lived side by side, Umut Adan grew up surrounded by cultural plurality and sonic fellowship. After moving to Italy as a student, he embraced a wide range of musical styles. A key moment in his artistic development came when he was invited by Jack White to open his Istanbul concert — a performance that caught the attention of legendary producer Liam Watson (The White Stripes, Elephant), who subsequently brought him to London for recording sessions. Led by Marco Fasolo and Liam Watson at Toe Rag Studios in London, these sessions gave shape to the album Bahar (Riverboat Records). Bringing psychedelic sounds into the present with striking originality, the album was awarded four stars by DownBeat, the internationally renowned jazz magazine widely regarded as an authority in the field, and was also honoured by Magnet Magazine as the top album of the year in its genre.

And now, with Başka Bahar, his new album released in early March on the American label Six Degrees Records, he takes an unexpected turn, surprising listeners by radically expanding the boundaries of his genre. Written between Istanbul, Turin, and Brussels, the album fuses Anatolian psych, electronic abrasion, field recordings, and narrative songwriting into a cohesive, anti-nostalgic statement. At once psychedelic, poetic, hypnotic, and danceable, Başka Bahar reinvents protest folk for the present tense. Conceived as a transnational, collective work, the album rejects both nostalgia and “exportable exoticism.” Its music is built from disintegration and recomposition: analog warmth collides with digital fractures, melody meets improvisation, and psych textures dissolve into abrasive electronic landscapes. The result is a sonic collage that feels expansive and hallucinatory in scope, intimate in tone, hypnotic in flow, and ultimately physical in its pull toward movement. Zebânis — Andrea Marazzi, Michele Bussone, and Filippo Gillono, members of Turin’s Pietra Tonale collective — do not merely accompany Adan: they challenge, amplify, and distort. The ensemble moves freely from narrative folk to noise, from ritual to desecration, operating with a DIY ethos rooted in the European underground. “Başka Bahar is a collective eruption — rejecting nostalgia, undoing tradition, and transfiguring the political voice into an electronic tempest,” says Umut Adan.