Istanbul Express ‎- 02:00 (1982)

The one and only album from this Danish band.

Istanbul Express was a quartet with a lineup of double bass, drums, percussions, acoustic guitars, saxophones, flute and baglama.

The engineer on this album was actually Flemming Rasmussen who later did the first four Metallica albums.

That is the only really "famous" about this very obscure band and album. An album written, produced and fronted by the Turkish musician Mehmet Ozan. He did the guitars, percussion and baglama here.

And this album is indeed a meeting of Danish jazz and Turkish folk music. Most of this album is folk and world music. Something I very rarely review in this blog. But I fell for the art-work and the promise that this was a fusion album....

There is a lot of good acoustic guitars here on this very nerdy, tech jazz folk rock album. Lots of flutes too from the Middle - East.

This album does indeed have this Turkish and Middle-East flavour many other bands later copied too. This album is a bit too weird for me and a bit too much world music. It is still a decent to good album, well worth checking out.

2.5 points