Burak Kaya: Climate Change (2015) reviewed by Tom Greenland
Published: June 2015 (The New York City Jazz Record)
Guitarist Burak Kaya’s Climate Change is a self-produced “message album” designed to heighten awareness of humans’ destruction of the ecosystem, adorned with 13-year-old Filipino artist Trisha Co Reyes’ provocative painting of a young girl drawing aside black and white curtains covered with images of pollution to reveal a colorful utopia of birds and beasts. Like the painting, Kaya’s chord changes are lush and chromatic, evidently inspired by Brazilian bossa nova and rendered with a delicate touch on classical guitar. Supported by the fleet-fingered bass playing of Ozan Musluoğlu, whose solos provide some of the album’s more dramatic moments, and minimalist hand percussion of Yinon Muallem, Kaya’s gentle compositions ebb and flow like waves on a beach, but would profit from more of the dark tension represented by the fish skeletons and noxious fumes on the curtains of Co Reyes’ painting—tension hinted at, but insufficiently explored, on tracks like “Ağaçkesen Köprüsü (Tree Cutter Bridge)” and “Gerze”.
For more information, visit burakkaya.com.tr
Tom Greenland, June 2015
(The New York City Jazz Record) »» »»