Uprooted: Major New Work From Minor Empire

Over the past six years, since their first album, 

Second Nature, won awards and accolades 

from a fascinated Canadian and international audience, 

the hands and hearts of Ozgu Ozman and Ozan Boz 

have been dedicated to fashioning a new transmission 

from the musical world they share as Minor Empire. 

And so, a new suite of songs, Uprooted, arrives this month, 

and it is a progression into new territories of elegant melody 

drifting over crackling dramatic landscapes of electronic 

pulsation. At the vanguard of Turkish-based music here in Canada, the duo has developed 

a unique mutualism that melds charismatic singing with the dark crystalline architecture 

of contemporary electro-funk. Uprooted launched on iTunes on October 26.

 To Listen And Buy Go Here

Throughout the record, modified vibrations emanate from Ozan’s guitar and intensely programmed sonic stylings, creating icy spatial realms, and periodically startling effects. These sounds inter-react with the unwinding incandescence of Ozgu’s vocal intaglios and the exotic acoustic tones of Patrick Graham’s taiko, bata, davul, darbuka, bendir and cymbals. Toronto’s Michael Occhipinti brings solar winds and shady breezes to his guitar imaginings and the sobbing bass of Chris Gartner underpins Ozgu’s sensual laments with an urgent organic intensity.

As the shamanic focus of the band, vocalist / lyricist Ozgu Ozman again reaches across the geography of her homeland, selecting techniques of expression from the vast vocabularies of the Balkan, Black Sea and other variegated Turkish cultures, and intuiting those which will translate traditional tropes into the vivid colours and desperate anguish of today’s nation. All are wound into a perfume of trills, glissandi and flights of improvisation that guide the listener along her sensually hypnotic harmonic pathways.

The prelude, Dinya / The World, comes shimmering in from a distance with Ozgu conjuring the rebirth of the world from her desire for just “a glimpse of your smile”. Its rich texture sets the tone for the theme of spiritual / romantic renewal that underpins the whole album. Echoes web the electric spaces framing the title track Yurtsuz / Uprooted. Rhythm cascades create arcs and arches for the wandering narrator to escape through into new worlds. 

The lyric describes the pilgrimage of a liberated spirit into the perilous new territory of freedom.

“In the nooks of this foreign world

I fooled myself with this dream of a life”

~ Yurtsuz

Central to the mood of the record is the theme of the disturbance of tranquility. 

The unnatural effect of being uprooted, this particular distress of the heart is the focus 

of the traditional songs that follow. In İki Keklik / Two Partridges, the dilemma of a 

passion which searches for an eternal beyond is mirrored in the patient heartbeat of the 

rhythm, while the melody explores blue-tinted questions of security and sincerity.

 And in Ağ Elime Mor Kınalar Yaktılar / They Put Henna in My Young Hands,

 the innocence of love is cut off by the hierarchies of tradition. 

Chambers of reverberating guitar, odd meters and quizzical electronic effects distort 

the simplicity of the melancholy narrator, and attempt to subvert her resolution, 

until, after a meditative acoustic kanun passage, she rallies with a hope for a better 

chance at fulfillment. 

Bahar / Spring, with a brief prelude of galvanized guitar drone entitled Seeds, brings a tidal 

rush of optimism at the midpoint of the album’s arc, which travels a path through stages of 

longing, questing for love, peace, and reunion. At each new bridge, Ozgu’s melody floats, 

restless but steadfastly expanding, over the turbulence of the relentless orchestration that 

surges and swirls beneath. Then the light of the sun, in Güneş Türküsü / Sun’s Song 

irradiates the listener with the rays of a sixties rock ballad. A slippery instrumental passage 

takes chromatic risks but ultimately delivers the vocalist to a new height of confidence.

The imperial tone of the intro to Green Handkerchief and reversion to a melodic minor key 

reprises the inevitable interference pattern that returns again to supplant the growth that 

the singer has been nurturing with complications. 

İstanbul’dan Üsküdar’a Yol Gider / Road From Istanbul to Uskudar begins the pilgrimage 

through a harsh landscape of fragmented emotions that wander from horror to helplessness 

as the world becomes too real and still more confusing to the spirit. A tone of lamentation 

then overcomes our troubadour as she casts her thoughts homeward over alternately 

sparkling and apocalyptic guitar in Selanik Türküsü / Song of Thessaloniki  and towards 

an attempt to balance resistance with an acceptance of destiny in the languid lyrics of 

Uyuttum Atları / I Put Horses to Sleep: 

“I gave the world my dreams

and they wanted to take my life.”

At the end of this cycle, there is only one destination left, as 

Tutam Yar Elinden / Wish I Could Hold Your Hand, 

resolves in the intuited peace that welcomes her beyond the confines of memory and 

earthly strife. Her voice fades into the ascending guitar and rises on waves of clattering

 drums into a new space, with, hopefully, roses and peace and a decisive final clarity.

Uprooted  takes the listener on a voyage of imagination. Always fearlessly rising, 

Minor Empire provides lush musical scenery and never succumbs to the perils of disaster and despair and doubt which plague those who remain rooted in the temporal plane, but persist towards another world that holds the promise of true soul nourishment, and a new home for hungry roots.

Minor Empire CD Launch At Hugh`s Room Live, Wednesday, 6 December 

$25 Advance / $30 At The Door 8:30 p.m.

A Far Cry - Minor Empire on Tour

If asked, how would you describe your impression of Turkish music?

If you’d had the opportunity to form one at all, it might sound something like this: initially you are impressed by the ornate vocal calligraphy, in misty scansion, as if echoing from high minarets.

Then you are hit by abstract musical vocabularies of disconnected intervals, spidery harps, and squeaky horns playing, like that sound you hear when blow on a tight blade of grass between your palms…

That is what you were thinking, right?

So try this one on: sexy electronic atmospheres with unwinding lyrical meditations, rolling through melodic modal changes, and outbursts of staccato percussion and cold fusion guitar pyrotechnics, with bass reverberations that spring into the realms of techno and dub: yikes! Can this also be Turkish music? Y’think?

Absolutely, yes! These qualities define the unique domain of Minor Empire, proud winners of the World Group of the Year Award at the 2011 CFMAs, with their new romantic, Ottoman-tic sounds, a magnetic cohesion of modern global musical thought, and virtuosic musicianship, formed and formulated here in Toronto.

Why so cool? I asked Ozan Boz, the band’s tidy architect, in a Bloor West cafe. “Because we do it from scratch.”

He speaks thoughtfully, “It’s all reflective of our Turkish roots, of course. We’ve paid attention to covering all of the geography and the various traditions of our country: Balkan, Black Sea, South East. But everyone tries to avoid stereotypical impressions of what they do. So we try not to sound like anyone else. It’s intuitive.”

In matters of intuition, he relies strongly upon his lissome vocalist and partner, Ozgu Ozman, whose shamanic mystique is the focus of their compelling live show.

As a result of the fall she took while entering the Isabel Bader Theatre on their victorious night at the CFMA’s, she has spent much of the year on crutches. Now on the verge of a summer tour, she has employed all the down-time in creating new songs.

“There is a screening process,” she smiles. ”To keep the music’s integral force, we have to have strong feelings about it. We isolate ourselves…carefully…to arrange the structures, the ideas, the unique qualities of each song.”

Ozan explains, “We start with simple things, but they have to be different. She will run upstairs and say, ‘Don’t stop playing that! That’s good!’ Then, without forcing, without formulation, we develop a sound. The unorthodox arrangements that we end up with are the products of the freedom we have to experiment and reflect. We create that freedom before we start to do the work.”

“We don’t care if it makes sense to others because it made sense to us,” Ozgu continues, “The goal is to not be afraid to put something out that you know is good.” They find that Canada provides the necessary fertility and freedom for song writing. Repression of the media is a sore spot in their homeland, which is otherwise a vibrant, competitive Islamic democracy.

“Turkey has been a bloodbath country throughout its history. The artists have to struggle to remain stable. This collective memory brings a lot of insecurity,” Ozan murmurs. “But we want that side to co-exist with our personal musical creation. The microtonal scales and meters are obviously Turkish, but there is a simultaneous feeling of where we are now, of the continuing heartbeat. It’s like two musics co-existing. It’s “Second Nature”, as our album title says. The terminology the press uses to describe the complexity of music hasn’t really expanded at the same rate as music has.”

The ineffable quality of Ozgu’s voice at the center of each song is the jewel from which the band radiates. Her charisma at center stage is both becalming and insurrectionary as the stream of her breathy voice urges the band and audience into deep feelings of longing and tranquility. “I rely on a lot of breath and chest voice for those meditative effects. The key is the breath coming in,” she confides. “We don’t do much post production on the voice,” smiles Ozan, proudly.

How important is it to be funky? “Very!” he insists. “I fool the dancers. I always place the beat squarely on the one, especially in the unusual time signatures. It feels like a strong downward kick, although the song may be in signatures of six, or seven or thirteen.”

Besides the print on the jewel case, there is no English on the disk. How do they communicate the cultural rudiments of their compositions to their Canadian cohort, including jazz guita r don Michael Occhipinti, progressive percussionist Debashis Sinha, and ambient bass strategist Chris Gartner?

“If I tell them the story of the lyrics, they can come to a response through innuendo, or abstraction,” says Ozgu. “We begin a song with a solo on the traditional saz or kanun to establish the terrain of the song” Ozan adds, “They understand what we are going for:” and he makes a lifting gesture, “The FEEL. There is a co-existence of different ideas. And they make some good calls.”

Michael Occhipinti identifies himself as “the improvising guy” in the outfit. “The melodies are so powerful that they create emotions which sustain lengthy improvisation,” he explains. “And Chris Gartner just makes everything so funky, you get sucked in.”

Part of this complex appeal is Michael’s use of electronic effects. “Like most guitarists, I’m not completely happy unless I’m stepping on a pedal. By manipulating sound and creating textures, a psychedelic quality comes out that’s really fun. It’s through juxtaposing folk music with some very modern ambience that Minor Empire achieves its transcendence.”

The addition of the intuitive Toronto trumpeter Lina Allemano to the current touring lineup promises further levels of sophistication in the live blend, as the band travels from the west coast through The Islands Folk Festival in Duncan B.C. July 20, The Mission Folk Festival July 21-22, Festival Place in Edmonton July 25, The Banff Centre July 27, and Toronto’s Harbourfront homecoming on July 28, prior to a grand finale at Hillside in Guelph July 29.

Inspiration galore will be provided by this young and innovative group of master players. Don’t miss the opportunity.