Although most works of Ilhan, being romanticized pop with a kind of mainstream Allan Parsons keyboards, are not worth to trace for collectors, there are two works of his I wish to mention.
With no doubt Ilhan has a very romantic beautiful voice. His music is either arranged with full orchestrations often somewhat loaded by some synthesizer or synthetic drums. A part of the working out of instrumentation has sparse progressive touches, but in fact musically is mostly accompanying the content of the music rather than being independent. Percussion is often the most commercial part (rarely a real drum has being used). Several songs of 1981 or 1987 are being most in balance. The strong character from some of Ilhan's music (some of it sound more commercial, most of it is just nice, but not progressive at all) is not the music seen from a musical level, but from the personal expression of it's content, and for the sweet melancholic singing often expressed. The best tracks are movie like with a slight mystic introverted dreamy touch. I don't understand what Ilhan is singing. At my first hearing of some works I think his music was nice, but not interesting for progressive ears. But after having had the chance to hear nearly all his works I realized where the strongness of his personal expression lays, which is at his best in the most melancholic themes and projects. I don't understand Turkish, so I can only get an impression of what it's all about :
Women are more than once strangely enough presented as being dead (drawn), as puppets where has been taken care off, or in some other way as reflections of real figures, as if a woman can't be reached. Where does this idea come from ? At his last releases Ilhan wears dark sunglasses all the time as if he's hidden within his own fantasies and reflections. He looks hidden from a closet just like a young boy looking at his mother out of reach at a life-size puppet ornamented with juwelery. Now as being grown up he has the chance to remake these ornamenting taking care of, still on a distance of a real woman, with a romantisesed darkened part of the soul, now transformed into a mystic and sweet character. The voice of Ilhan is no doubt at his strongest when such personal expressions are full of emotions. His most personal work "Romance" can therefore also be recommended to open minded music lovers, for being so personal. Percussion not always is the strongest part at Ilhan's work for it's often expressed with electronic sounding drum machines. Altough such instruments rarely bring much warmth and depth where the rest of the music does. "Romance" was in fact a meditative version of "Korridor" (interesting too) for fans who asked for such an album with less percussion !
Open minded progressive music lovers I suggest to try "Romance/Romans" at first. But don't expect it to be most active from a purely musical level (as in a progressive music sense ) ; its strength comes directly from the personal expression of its content only .
Later I was told that my visions on the content of the music seemed to be correct.
There exist more websites on the net. You can use a search engine to look for them.
updated 2003-02-22
