The group published a Syd Barrett cover on the "Vegetable Man" series. They are making a kind of 'psychedelic groovy Ottoman folkrock'.
Info: Dinar Bandosu is an eastern Istanbul based neo-ottoman psychedelic/future rock band. They describe theirselves as an “art gang” performing music, visual arts and dance.
The members early 2005 were :
Ali Ece (fuzzy echoing guitar, rebab)
Asaf Zeki Yüksel (ney, clarinet, various weird instruments made by himself, backing vocals)
Burcu Öztaşkın (flangering bass, back vocals)
Mehmet Bilgiç (wah wah guitars)
Meltem Ural (vocals)
Nurece Yılmazel (dancing, backing vocals)
YIlma Karatuna (drums, darbuka, bendir, percussion)
Since mid 2005 :
Ali Ece (fuzzy echoing guitar, rebab)
Asaf Zeki Yüksel (ney, clarinet, weird selfmade instruments, theremin, backing vocals)
Burcu Öztaşkın (flangering bass, back vocals)
YIlma Karatuna (drums, darbuka, bendir, percussion)
Aslý (vocals)
and guest on live gigs:
Murat Ertel (saz player from Baba Zula)
The band is formed by Ali Ece and Kerem Tansever in early 2003. The name “Dinar Bandosu” is originated from one of the most influential underground turkish poets called Ece Ayhan. "Dinar Bandosu" is an innovation of Ece Ayhan, it's an imaginary band in wich the turkish intellectuals and artists play the various western and turkish musical instruments. But this band always stayed as an imaginary project because these intellectuals and artists never played any musical instruments in their life. Neither Ece Ayhan didn't play any music in his entire life but his obsession with the atonal music made him create this band in his mind. 'Dinar' is a town in city of Afyon (Opium) near the western Turkey. Afyon is a city where there are very large fields of opium but USA had forbidden the production in the 60's. They choosed that name because they wanted to concrete the project of Ece Ayhan. The former singer Meriç Güleç wrote that name on the fogged glass of the studio where "Interstellar Vegetable Man" is recorded. Dinar Bandosu started to play music by covering psychedelic anthems and after they began to write their own songs in early 2003. The band was formed by Meriç Güleç(vocals), Ali Ece (fuzzy flanger guitar, rebab), Kerem Tansever (oriental guitar, saz, ney), Kerem Dalgayaran (bass), Asaf Zeki Yüksel (clarinet, tapes, trombone and various weird instruments made by himself) and Ali Kayaalp (drums). They had an offer from “Have You Got it Yet?” Syd Barrett global cover project and they recorded an interesting version called “Interstellar Vegetable Man”. The song had good feedback and critics and they started recording their own songs.
After recording their own songs and some material for the psychedelic cover projects all around the world, the two founders of the band were called to the army and they spent the most productive months of their life in the southeast of Turkey where the separatist and fundamentalist terror rule. They returned home in the winter of 2004 and begun reforming Dinar Bandosu. They looked for new musicians after being disappointed with the current members. Kerem Tansever must leave Istanbul instead of Morocco for financial issues but always continued to compose songs and playing some electric saz. Dinar Bandosu with remaining members Ali Ece, Asaf Zeki Yüksel and a groove machine called “Dr Groove” was at the edge of being history but the young drummer and percussionist Yılma Karatuna came and a new Dinar Bandosu is born in the summer of 2005 with the addition of the brilliant bass player Burcu Öztaşkın.
With the addition of other current members, Dinar Bandosu's sound has been progressed through a less garage and more experimental, danceable, neo-Otoman way of psychedelica influenced by Stooges, 70’s Barısh Mancho & Kurtalan Ekspress, 13th Floor Elevators, Kemal Sunal Movie soundtracks, Syd Barrett's "Punk" Floyd, old Mogollar, early Funkadelic, Mavi Ishıklar, Spacemen 3, ottoman popular music, Turkish "art" music and Primal Scream. Their music is free-minded, revolutionary and black-funny. They are just spreading their demo records on free Mp3 site soulseek for the interested people all around the world. But they are just negotiating with some record companies for a legal release. They want to record their albums with a dozen part-time musicians as gypsies and every kind of marginal musicians. Their most famous songs are "The Dream of Kemal Sunal", "Psychedeliczede Mahmut Pasha" and "The hymn of the Acid House".
Recently the band totally changed their band members. They now have a female vocalist and bassist and sound better than ever before.
PS. Asaf Zeki Yüksel also is a well known painter and performance artist; Ali Ece also is a highly-rated young writer, his first book in which an imaginary ottoman psychedelic is the main character is been well accliamed critically, he is shown as one of the best future writers, he's already working on his new two books; earlier member Tarkan Güveli also is a very talented young painter, Kerem "Sugar" Tansever still is writing but his main interest is composition and musical engineering.
Since late 2005 some other line-up changes occured : Meltem Ural is no longer the singer, nor
Nurece is dancing anymore and there is no Mehmet Bilgiç (wah wah guitars) in the band. They now are a 5 piece band. The singer is called Aslý, possibly the highlight now, Asaf plays theremin too and he's the center of the attention from the public.
