A maverick in Istanbul. Alexander Hacke, has been a member of the German avant garde band Einstürzende Neubauten for more than 20 years. He first came into contact with the city and its music while producing the score for the movie Head-On. In Istanbul he met the members of the neopsychedelic band Baba Zula. When their bass player dropped out, he was asked to sit in for her. Alex Hacke is a collector of musical styles and loves to experiment with sound, and so it didn’t take much to persuade him. But he didn’t just bring his bass guitar, he also brought along a complete mobile recording studio, including his “magic mike”, which he has used to capture exotic sounds from all over the world. He calls his approach to collecting sounds “street recording”, and it allows him to make professional recordings just about anywhere. And so he sets out to capture the musical diversity of Istanbul onto his hard drive. His aim is to expose western ears to the broadest possible spectrum of Turkish music, ranging from modern electronic sounds, rock and hip-hop, right down to classical “Arabesque” music. Fatih Akin, director of Head-on, accompanies him with his camera and shoots a portrait of Istanbul’s lively music scene, whose music suffuses every part of the city, and which is dearly loved by all of its inhabitants. Hacke’s home base is the venerable Büyük Londra Oteli (Grand Hotel de Londres) in Istanbul’s district of Beyoglu, probably the most “European” spot in all of Turkey. From here he wanders through an alien, contradictory, lively, and seductive world, collecting impressions and tracks, drifting along in the unstoppable stream of this mega city of myriad facets.
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