There is something profoundly compelling and unsettling about Istanbul's Lalalar. There is a shapeshifting principle to their slither that drives them in a nonlinear advance. Like a side-winder writhing in reverse. Like a scorpion stinging its own reflection. Like a vision of a shadow without an object to block the light and give it shape. A form that exists in defiance of cause.
It's incredible that they can give license to something so mercurial through sound alone. The band has a frictionless sense of rhythm, that, despite its delimited, bold outlines, will cascade through you like chaos incarnate. And still, you may find them enticing, without fully understanding why. They are like the serpent, lowering itself from a branch with an apple clenched between its fangs, daring you to take a bite and taste its venom.
Lalalar's debut LP Bi Cinnete Bakar is nearly long enough to be a double album, and yet, this length doesn't represent a long enough period to unzip the skinsuit they've arrived in and finish the scapulimancy they've induced by welcoming you into their interior.
A lesser soul might find themselves gripping onto the defiant surge of Anatolian rock that courses through Lalalar's sound as a means of establishing one's barring. But to back them into such a stylistic corner feels like a crime. Luckily Lalalar doesn't give the listener any such opportunity. Their raison d'être as a band is to cut through such categories as a scimitar might slash through the leather jacket of a would-be-mugger- piercing through the restrictions in form and leaving the assailant to drop their shank and contemplate the folly of their life as it reaches an abrupt conclusion.
The retro-voyager chic of Anatolian traditions only serves to cement the ground level of LaLalar's music, though. What serves as the true catalyst to unleash the band's baffling black magic is an audacious integration of industrial dance music tendencies.
There is more than a subtle roar of the witchy eastern winds emanating from Sisters of Mercy on "Sol Şeritte" and the spell like "Hala Benim Gobek Adim" has a mendacious sense of direction, furthered in its wicked chase by a pulsing synth groove that coaxes it towards its darker inclinations like a demiurge perched upon its shoulder.
The crushing funk bass of "Mecnun'dan Beter Haldeyim" will catch you around the neck like a garrote, and will further mock your frantic, twisting motions toward freedom from its grasp with a bountiful pour of dance beats and gripping washes of icy synth crests. The guitar lines on "Yamyam" will run a red race like a razor blade skirting along your skin while wicked synth roils cause your blood to boil and steam to escape through your wounds like smoke flowing out the broken windows of a burning house.
The rhythm on "Simülasyon Terk" seems to be the band's take on the funk roll of a pitch-black '70s exploitation flick while the shifting sands of "Depresyondan Çıktım Boşluktayım" gives singer Ali Güçlü Şimşek the opportunity to trade in his deep stoic purr for a somber shamanistic folk-soul flow intersperse with tiger-toothed raps.
There is never a dull moment in the sonic death dive that is Bi Cinnete Bakar. Cast out your regrets and inhibitions and let its eerie power rush in to fill the void.
