PHOTO AYTEKIN YALÇIN, STYLING MERT YEMENICIOĞLU, MAKE UP GÜLÜM ERZINCAN, HAIR SEDAT TEMUR
Gaye Su Akyol is an ethereal being. In the half an hour that we speak over Skype, we cover quantum physics, philosophy, anthropology and economics – and that’s just the material stuff of her latest album, Istikrarli Hayal Hakikattir (Consistent Fantasy Is Reality), an Anatolian dreamscape of psychedelic, surf rock, punk and traditional Turkish Arabesk. Born in Istanbul, Gaye grew up surrounded by extended family. “I had a happy childhood. My grandparents, uncle, brother, everybody was around me.” Crucially, for the version of Gaye I’m speaking to, her childhood home vibrated with music and brimmed with art. “My father is a painter and my mother was a great singer, not professionally, but she was very into Turkish classical music and so I was raised surrounded by that. My uncle was into rock’n’roll, my brother, grunge, my father, folk music and classical western music. I was very lucky.”
One of the first memories Gaye has from childhood is of the day her father bought her a keyboard. “It was a very small one, a Casio, but this was the first instrument I made my own songs with. I was probably five years old when I was writing these funny songs. There was one, Crazy Heart, it started, ‘Crazy heart, it’s so late. Goodbye, this world can not be left until the doomsday. It’s wrong to live this life like your eye and’… I’m trying to translate,” she laughs. “‘And these eyes are wrong also like you.’” This was at five years old? “I was clearly a very sad child in my heart,” she laughs again. “I think I was trying to emulate my father’s poems, I was trying to be deep.”