I am a songwriter/musician, dj, painter, graphic artist and teacher originally from canada, but currently living in istanbul, turkey.
Music
I have been playing and recording my own music since the age of 16. my musical style varies, but usually evolves around or mixes three main themes, eastern folk music, irish & scottish folk music, and rock.
Important influences include: Daevid Allen, The Incredible String Band, Syd Barrett, The Third Ear Band, Spiritualized, The Flaming Lips, early Black Sabbath, The Stooges, Jane's Addiction, Television, the Butthole Surfers and 60's garage rock.
I also collect instruments from around the world, my favourites being a japanese koto, a celtic lap-harp, and of course my very worn lap-dulcimer. In my self-released demo cd 'The Kara Bayram Series', the songs contain unusual mixtures of turkish folk instruments such as oud, electric saz, cümbüs, benidir, santoor (persian) and offset them with some tape effects and floating electric guitar lines.
Bands played with, and instruments played
Fez electric, lead guitar, bass(Vancouver and Victoria, Canada),
Fata Morgana electric and bowed guitar, chinese moon guitar, celtic lap harp, dulcimer (Victoria, Canada),
Not Since the Illness electric, lead guitar (Istanbul, Turkey)
Dinar Bandosu, bass guitar (Istanbul, Turkey)
Chicken Monkey,guitar, dulcimer, sampling, keyboards
Painting
I also like to paint and use an eclectic assortment of bright warm colours creating scenes of imaginary landscapes, strange haunting characters, abstract symbolism and asymetric design.
Graphic Arts & Desktop Publishing
While mostly designing promotional materials for bands (including web design, concert flyers and posters, album cover artwork and layout, etc.) I still spend time designing computer generated artwork for fun. some of the results can be found in my photos page.
Dj-ing
I DJ locally two or three times every month. usually I play a mix of idie rock, 70's punk, new-alt-country, and all the obscure stuff I find on the internet. Once and a while, I Dj with Mete Avunduk, a man with a reputation for fine music and a record collection to match.
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