Mor Ve Ötesi - Güneşi Beklerken. Amateur, personal review

This album opened itself up to me like a revelation. If listening to 30 secs sample has given me a taste of "good, expectedly good", after  listening to the whole deal, all 12 songs, and giving myself time to feel and digest what I've heard, I'm knocked off my feet.

It is a handful, or better, heartful of different journeys, places and atmospheres. Mor Ve Ötesi have matured, ripen musically and emotionally. There's strong and thick rhythm section, Kerem Özyeğen's guitar virtuosity, Harun Tekin's voice has never sounded more technically perfect, convincing and sincere. Personaly, my favourite features of MvÖ's music have always been: marvelous combining of  backing vocals, unexpected melody modulations and unique orchestrations. Here, those features are stonger than ever.

From catchy, solid rock "Sana Değmez", through "Boş Bir Dünya" with its dashing refrain and Harun Tekin's voice in low register underlining the song, through sad, strory-telling-like "Eski Sarkisi", spiced with  perfect dosage or oriental touch.

Suggestive whispery beginning of "Son Sabah" leads to an unexpected change of tempo and almost romantic, flowing refrain.

Warm, soft Burak Güven's vocal accompanied with dissonant, disturbing orchestration in the middle and final section of "Mermiler"

"Bahar", one of my favourites - energetic combination of electronic sound with crushing guitars and rather complicated  bass line.

"Denize Doğru" brings us warm breath of summer breeze, trembling guitars and beautiful colision of Burak Güven's and Kerem Özyeğen's  voices. As we're used to hear these two in the background, it was a great idea to give this well coordinated duet - a leading role. It gives a special touch to this beautiful, reassuring song.

Clear, clean, blue, gentle "Oyunbozan" is yet another gem with simple but unique guitar style. Its suggestive,  not too artistically uncommunicative structure makes it a perfect promo song.

So far fans' most favourited, seems to be "Yağmur, Teşekkürler". It's a beautiful, soft slow song with unexpected dominant usage of keyboards and cello, untypical for Mor Ve Ötesi. It convincingly mimes raindrops, whether you take them literally or metaphorically.

Jazzyish, contemplative "Tamiri Mumkum Kalbine" and  somewhat discontinuous, harmonic experiment "Gel Söndur Beni" take us to the last, but certainly not least , the song album's been titled after (with every right), "Güneşi Beklerken". It is a hard, emotional, heartbreaking, midlife song with a beautiful melody and ingenious, almost Baroque orchestration, with dominating harpsichord-sounding keyboards. Sung perfectly, Harun Tekin's voice is strong, deep and full, it almost breaks with emotions  at the highest chorus peak, still it doesn't sound pathetic or overdone. Lack of backing vocals underlines his ability to transfer the genuine feeling, even to those (like myself) who can't quite understand the lyrics. True meaning lies within music, instruments, voice. It's a rare and outstanding quality. This song somehow is an abstract of my personal history of music, music I've loved and felt deeply, from Bach, Henry Purcell,through Simple Minds to The Verve and Mor ve Otesi themselves. Everything's in it, I can sense it while it fits its place perfectly, making probably one of the best songs I've ever heard, and proving homonymous album  - a masterpiece.