IS 143 – Sarp Yilmaz (live) [Apparel, Unfoundsound, Tablon]

Sarp est un gaillard qui pourrait paraître timide au premier abord mais pas du tout. Il a la langue bien pendue et n’hésites pas à dire ce qu’il pense. Rencontré en décembre dernier lors de sa venue sur Paris je lui avais demandé s’il pourrait nous enregistrer un live pour le podcast. Et c’est chose faite, avec quasiment que des morceaux qu’il n’a pas encore signés, ça annonce la couleur pour les sorties à venir ! On en a profité pour lui poser quelques questions :

First, could you tell us a bit about your life in Istanbul, your hobbies, your favorite places?

It’s pretty dull really, I’m pretty antisocial, hanging out mostly at home, doing music , taking care of my cats and flowers. I wasn’t always like that , used to be pretty social person with a huge friendship circle and all but then something has changed in me . Now I don’t really go out if It’s not for work.

Where do you live in Istanbul? Does your neighborhood inspire you?

I live in the centre of Bakirkoy, one of the older towns in the city compared to some , its near the airport , half an hour drive from the city center. It’s more peaceful than the city centre. And the people are nicer. Other than that I don’t get the idea of being  » inspired » anyway. You don’t need to get inspired to eat or drink right ? it’s a basic instinct so music is bit like this for me.

How many years have you been in electronic music? Did you start with producing or mixing?

Oh this goes way back. There were some twins around where I live when I was like 15 and they used to come from Germany and they were big into hip-hop at the moment and they used to ram run dmc’s and public enemys after another, so that’s the first time I was probably got hooked, but I was already a pretty good guitar player then , performing with my mates and all, so I was already deep into music, and I wasn’t pretty clear how they did those beats underneath the rapping and all, cause it sounded a lot different than the rock music I was listening and performing and it kinda intrigued me to get to know the technic behind it. I was never really into mixing and djing at all, I wanted to know how they make the beats that the Djs spin. So I learned all about sampling and mpc’s and stuff, but I was young and poor and all that shit was way outta my price range to afford, but then computers came along and there were trackers and first primitive sequencing software and I started to get more and more into it and started to going into clubs and shit. I learned spinning much much later around 2003 , cause basically everybody else around me was doing it, but I was the only one who is actually trying to produce stuff , but people were pretty sure that you cant do real records with a computer , cause you need that synth and that drummachine and all , and they were having a laugh with me , but of course they shut up when I released my first record in 2004. But then after a very short time , clubbing became the biggest thing with the arrival of mass quantities of ecstasy in Turkey and DJ wars began and I just took the hike back to my rock’n’roll scene , this time as sound engineer and was pretty away from all the clubbing scene till the end of 2009 when I quit sound engineering for good, for various reasons, so I was there sitting up on my ass with nothing to do , so I ve gone back to producing, just so I have something to do , at first I was pretty unserious, just doing lotsa rubbish Tech-house and stuff to pass time just copying the sounds that are around at the moment , but when I started to get more and more into it,and started releasing lotsa stuff, I decided, so I take what I do seriously , and started forging a more personal sound and producing not what is already around , but what I feel like producing .

When it comes to composition, everyone has its own habits, what are yours?

I don’t really compose. I just jam around and if I feel one of this jams sounds like something worth hearing again, I start to edit it more properly and turn it into a track, as much as it gets.

I’ve seen you teaching at SAE Institute, could you tell us a bit more about your work there?

I’m not really teaching there , It was a one time seminar, where I showed a little bit of my sampling techniques, and preached a bit about things to those who want to have fame and glory in the colorful world of dance music.

How is the scene in Istanbul?

Ah so many wonderful things to say but unfortunately I quit bitching recently so I will just say the people who are producing great stuff and getting positive reactions from outside of the turkey are usually ignored by the promoting and clubbing crew. Its all about who knows who and whos the promoters buddy and all.

The thing that you prefer in the international electronic music scene and what disgust you the most?

Well man , like I said I quit bitchin but I will give you an analogy from my botanist perspective. When you want to grow a beatiful flower, You sow the seed and then give it the required amount of water and nutrients and you have to wait. Sometimes you have to wait a looooong time till it flourishes, and you can become very anxious about it and you may try to push it , give it more water or stronger nutrients , but it will not make the flower grow faster , instead it will damage it, most of the time kill it, and even if the plant survives the mishandling , it will become a crooked and bad looking flower at best. In this garden of house music I see a lot of young seedlings that are overdriven a great deal and will die pretty soon of it, I also see a lot of pushed, overdriven big plants that look nothing like the flower should look if it had been grown properly.

What was your best performance and the worst one?

Dunno man , I don’t really dwell in the past, The best , the worst … they are all gone right?

What is the definition of a real artist for you? Which one of Berlin, Detroit, and Chicago influenced you the most?

Tough question. I am in no position to comment on the « reality » of certain things , cause the very definition of « real » is a debate of thousands of years who’s been cloaked up in smoke and mirrors and havent been come to a resolve yet. So I can not really give a description or anything, but I can say the art I like, grabs you somewhere outside of the borders of language and common sense and I can pretty easily say that I’m 100 X more influenced by Missisippi than the famous three . lol.

What do you listen at home? Any forbidden track?

Well that changes a lot , but I listen to very few dance music . Nowadays I listen a lot to Birsen Tezer , a Turkish Jazz vocalist who fuses jazz with turkish music or better put; performs turkish folk music in a jazzy way with her band. Here is an example if you like.

I heard many times that crisis brings creativity, what do you think about it? How is the situation now in Istanbul?

Turkey is in deep shit man . The recent uprising was greatly an emotional response to what is going on at the moment and it really didnt have the intellectual basis to change things. But thats like that anywhere in the world now, look at the occupy movements and things going on in europe and egypt etc . People know theres something wrong with the world and sometimes when somebody fires up and says enough , many will follow them to the streets with a kind of emotional charge, but that kind of romantic reactions quickly fade away and when you sit down with this people and try to talk what really bothers them, you quickly find out they are lost in details, they always blame some political party or some policy change in the government etc but they overlook the fact that the whole system is set up to be crooked. People need to know clearly how the current economic system works, how the money system works, how the political system works and how much social enginnering is involved in our current common sense and world views and ethics. But they simply don’t . They look to change things in detail which overall wont make an effect at all . You can still see that 90 percent of the people dont ever question well established fallacies like Democracy and Law and Ethics. Anyway this is a long discussion but Istanbul is chilled out a bit now but this is temporary, cause nothing has changed and it even got worse , the government used the uprising to broaden up its control over things in the name of security and blabla, so I think It actually backfired. And there are horrible things happening at our southeast borders , where the policy of our government to support El-Nusra against the current Syria regime can get out of control any moment . Anyway short story , I dont see a light at the end of this tunnel. I see another tunnel after this tunnel and I don’t think that it in some way boosts up my creativity or anything. That whole thing just makes me depressed .

What is the track that you makes you the proudest?

I dunno man , you tell me , which one should make me proud, lol, honestly I don’t see any pride in making noises, Music is an addiction that ruined my life more than some people are ruined by drugs and shit. It made me into a lonely , melancholic person who struggled all his life with financial problems , family problems, health problems etc, I could have a way easier life, if I did something else based on my education and do music as a hobby like many people do. but I just couldnt. I’m an addict . Some people may see pride in that. I don’t.

Any words about this live?

It’s mostly jams of many tracks which in their finished versions will be on my next album, which will be out next year in double 12″ I hope.

Future releases?

Who knows what will become of us tomorrow. I certainly don’t . Like I said there’s my album I’m working on atm other than that I live pretty much in oblivion.

Track/artist of the moment for you?

Ha, I rather keep this one to myself. I’m pretty music-jealous. lol.

Any dreams for the future? Any ideas?

I used to have dreams when I was younger , but then life fucked them all up and nowadays I just survive and be thankful when things get not worse. I know it’s fucked up and sounds cowardly but that’s just the way it is. Thanks Input selector and Arnaud for giving me this chance of nonsensical self-reflection, It was fun. See you back in Paris or maybe someday in Istanbul. cheerz.