Kim Ki O’s musical makeup consists of Berna Göl on bass and Ekin Sanaç on synthesizer. Both share vocal duties, lifting the group in an understated melodious direction. They accompany themselves with a drum machine and occasional radiation of cassette interference. Born from the detritus of No Wave, New Wave, the synth ‘80s and the Riot Grrrl Movement, Kim Ki O have a penchant for minimalist attack – one part perfunctory grit, one part ethereal soothing. As it stands, they have two handcrafted cd-rs, En Az İki, En Fazla Sekiz (2007) Diğerleri Nerde? (2008) and a track on Radio Resistencia (2009), a compilation from Dutch label Enfant Terrible. These first years have brought them considerable recognition, including a European tour with Jens Lekman and kudos from NME in the February 2009 issue.
"Ne Yapsam Anlarsin" - Diğerleri Nerde?
Ekin: ”All those shops, they would also burn music onto tapes, cassettes…”
Berna: “That wasn’t burning. That was copying. So if you wanted to get something new, you would have to go there. You’re totally depending on the guy. Maybe he got some albums [we asked for] with the wrong names.”
Ekin: “If they copy one album for you and there is some space left at the end, they would copy something which they think is similar [which] you might like. You find out about that band with that. That was quite nice. It was a huge thing to follow music cause there were few magazines… There was Rock Kazanı, one weekly magazine translated from the weekly Kerrang! magazine in English. We found out a lot of stuff from that magazine also. When there isn’t internet, there was only people. It was so great. We always talk about this, that we feel really lucky that we were not born into MP3s, but we also have experience finding music, and different music which was not available cause the music we got they wouldn’t sell those…. The way they got [the music] was by going outside [Turkey], buy those cds and bring them in a suitcase. And they would burn…”
“Copy.”
“…copy them onto cassettes and sell them only like that. And they would have that great archive and you could choose anything you want and get it for really cheap on cassette. That’s how we found out about most music actually.”
From this mid-90s Riot Grrrl influence came dyed hair and handmade “Girls Kick Ass” t-shirts – the DIY approach. Creativity outside established artistic systems. In short, they had found a new attitude and methodology to accompany the music they loved.
Ekin explains the ethos: “It was mostly about doing what you want to do. Not judging. Can’t stand to be judged. That sorta thing.”
Berna: “It’s not only about being a girl, but being someone. Most people that are not really into it think that it’s mostly a feminist thing only. But I think it’s beyond that. Feminism itself is beyond that, too.”
Ekin adds: “It wasn’t aggressive. Not that kind of thing. Mostly about everyone being equal. Everyone having the right to do what they want.”
And so they started making “small attempts” in music. However, setbacks came along the way: traumatic, humourous, unknown. There was the shocking suicide of their drummer in high school, shutting them down musically and emotionally for awhile; there was Berna’s parents’ reluctance to buy her an electric bass because they thought she meant the more expensive upright bass – their refusals continued for a couple years until they realized their error; and there were the late high school years when they ran in different crowds.
Berna: “We kind of lost touch. Actually, in the last years of high school we were staying apart…”
Ekin finishes the thought: “…for reasons we can’t even remember now. Then we saw each other exactly three years ago when we started Kim Ki O. We were catching up with each other. We both had other bands but they weren’t really going great.”
Berna counter-interjects and rights the story: “Actually, it happened like this. We ran into each other on the street and I think the second thing she said was ‘I want to start a girl band.’ I was like, ‘Yeah? Me too! We can get a drummer and go play.’ Then two days after, we talk on the phone, and we go to the studio without anybody else and we start playing. That’s how it started. It was really fast.” Their energy is high as they recall their reunion.
Ekin continues: “First, we were planning to find a drummer. Then, a few days later, we said, ‘Let’s get a drum machine instead.’ And that’s how we got the drum machine. And we were really into playing the music at home. Not going to rehearsal spaces at certain times. You have to pay. We wanted to get away from that.”
Berna: “In two months time, we played at a friend’s wedding.” They laugh at the oddity of their first performance. “There were three songs. There were a lot of people in that place. Almost everybody was into music.”
Ekin: “These friends of ours had an open stage for the wedding party where anyone could go up and play whatever they wanted. So we got ready to make our first appearance. It was quite funny.”
Berna: “Everybody was really supportive.”
Ekin: “Everyone was shocked cause nobody knew about it.”
Berna: “We didn’t know about it.”
By this juncture, their interests had changed somewhat and New Wave and a synthesizer entered the equation. At turns, melodious and airy, at others, dissonant and grating, Kim Ki O’s dreamlike vocals and synth are usually carried on the back of a driving bass, a drum machine and perhaps a taped sample. I asked them how they developed such a unique sound and what their process was.
Ekin: “Mostly improvising. I know it sounds weird, but it’s mostly the music.”
Berna: “We try out some sounds…”
Ekin: “…we stick to certain melodies…”
Berna: “…then the song comes out. We don’t even usually talk much about… We just play and then the song is finished.”
Ekin: “We just take some time to write some lyrics.”
Berna: “Yeah, usually with lyrics we discuss, stop and discuss, especially if we’re both singing. ‘What are you saying?’”
Ekin: “With the lyrics, too, we write our own parts. With the instruments as well. We first start with the drums, with the beats actually. We write out a beat, then we start playing with it.”
Berna: “Vocals usually come latest.”
In translation, their lyrics come across in an abstract yet melancholic vein, particularly because of the plaintive melodic lines voiced. I wanted to hear how they’d developed this with regard to influences. They said they had none. They listened to “99.9 percent” English music, Berna explains, and influence through languages was too “indirect…. The notion of the language – the idea of the Turkish language is really different than English. For instance, it’s something you can notice when you write something down, especially prose or something like that. In Turkish, you just say these vague expressions and people usually get what you mean. That’s the attitude. But in English, it’s the other way around. Like everything is really specific, so usually it’s really hard to translate.”
Ekin then delves into how they go about writing the lyrics: “In the Turkish language, there are all these suffixes in order to make a proper sentence. And it’s not really nice, all those long words while singing, so it’s been difficult for us.”
“A challenge.”
“…Yeah, it was challenging, not difficult. But we really pushed it to write them in Turkish. We were so curious about what was going to happen. So we use more vague sentences, not like complete sentences, but vague expressions and make sentences out of them. And we play with the words and rhymes and stuff like that.”
Berna: “Usually, with the words especially, there are these certain suffixes that sometimes can mean a lot of things at the same time… Even the person can be just one person or many people.”
"Serbest Kalp Düşmesi" - En Az Iki, En Fazla Sekiz
“The way we write lyrics are quite personal,” Ekin clarifies, “although they’re about really general and social issues most of the time. We’re not like, ‘oh, don’t do this.’ It’s not like that.”
Berna: “Usually pointing out the dilemmas and the problems.”
Ekin agrees: “Yeah but very personal. Our music is very much based in the city life. The things we talk about especially.”
Berna: “The lives we are living.”
Ekin: “Yeah, it has to be like that, we feel.”
Berna: “Definitely, if we were living in some other city…the music, there would be no way it would be like this.”
Ekin: “We feel that it would be completely different from this. We feel really dependent on [Istanbul] because it’s very emotional for us. [It’s] how we write songs.”
Berna: “Even in Izmir it would be really different.” Laughter.
I mention a video I’d seen on their Myspace in which Ekin introduced the song “Mutsuzsunuz, Hepiniz” from Radio Resistencia as “about glue sniffers in Istanbul.” Ekin, who wrote the lyrics, offers her thoughts: “It’s about glue sniffers who live on the streets. We have many. They’re usually labeled as dangerous cause you know…”
Berna interjects: “They are dangerous.”
“…they are dangerous. Lots of things happen like [starting] people on fire…”
“…or they have sometimes razors…”
“…or thefts. But the idea of the song is that it’s not the only problem that they’re dangerous. The problem is that there are so many of them. These kids had to run away from their houses. Because there’s not much for them to do, they had to choose this life.”
Berna: “It’s not as simple as it seems. It’s this dilemma you would have if they ask for money. You kind of want to give something. But also you don’t want to because of what…”
Ekin: “…he’s gonna buy more glue, and you will be paying that person to buy themselves more glue. And the song is actually about being happy. Like the glue sniffer comes to you and asks for money and you don’t give it to him. [You] think that you’re doing something really kind [for] that person, but it’s not actually really kindness. There’s this dilemma that you are not even happy and it’s not all about you even. You are probably as unhappy as he is cause you label him that way. It’s quite complicated.” She breaks into laughter again as both of them have done more times than I’ve mentioned.
The last (and first) three years for Kim Ki O have been exciting ones, having done some European tour dates with Swedish crooner Jens Lekman and others. I asked, “How do bands break out in a way?” as they had done with the Lekman tour and the European interest they have garnered.
“Unconsciously,” Ekin admits. “It was quite weird for us actually. The Swedish band, The Radio Dept, played a show here in Istanbul in 2007.”
Berna: “Maybe a week after we were done the Cd.”
Ekin: “And I’m a huge fan of them, so I gave them our Cd-r. And they went back home and stuff like that. I was so excited I just gave it to them. I wasn’t expecting any comment on it or something like that. Then [a Radio Dept. member] texted me a few days later, and he said that he’s really, really into it, and he’s gonna spread the word. He started [playing] it for his friends. That’s how in Sweden Jens Lekman found out about it, through that band’s friend [who] put it in his blog. [Jens] wrote us an email and asked us for the Cd, so that’s how we started writing emails. Before we even met, before he came to Istanbul to play, he wanted us to be his opening band on his European tour. He was like, ‘This is my schedule. Which part would you want to fit in? Can you do that?’ We were so excited obviously. You know it wasn’t like we sent it out to people, and we didn’t send it to any labels. It was just from mouth-to-ear kind of thing. He’s really great. Then, we fit in for five dates for his European tour.”
Berna: “When it started happening other things followed in a way. Then there was another Stockholm gig a few months after that tour with Jens Lekman. Then there was a Berlin gig. This January actually. Then there was this Scandinavian tour [where] we had seven gigs in three countries, which is pretty big for us.”
Ekin: “We could never imagine something like that.”
Berna: “We’re always talking about it like, ‘If we knew this was gonna happen, if someone just could have told us when we were fourteen or something, we wouldn’t have gone through that much trouble…”
Ekin: “…all those depressed years.” They laugh again.
Ekin, “We still have a hard time comprehending these happenings to us.”
I ask if anything else was in the works. They look at each other reluctantly. “You can say it,” Berna says. Ekin had just heard the day before that Enfant Terrible wanted to put out a six song vinyl EP upcoming on the music label. “[We are]very excited,” Ekin says. “Vinyl has been our biggest dream. Like holding ourselves.” She raises her hands as if holding an imaginary record.
The interview winds down and I ask them what kind of art they like. Internationally, they mention Manic Street Preachers, Electrolane, My Favorite, Mikachu. Liechtenstein and Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. Locally, they are fans of experimental performance group Biriken, artist/dancer İlyas Odman and painter, Ece Kalabak, whose opening they played in July. Even today, they seem motivated in part by the ethics of those bygone years of Akmar.
Ekin says: “I’m really into handmade stuff, basically, when it comes to art…still.” Laughs.
Berna: “And people who also have something to say. Like the way they produce it, also has a different approach, who don’t go through the conventional things, but try to try out other ways and struggle with other problems. That’s what makes things more valuable for me. I’m not really a good art appreciator. Otherwise, I really don’t know much. When I feel that this is going on – and this goes for you too –” she says to Ekin, “with music –whatever, it doesn’t matter – it feels ‘yeah, ok.’ It feels stronger, you know?”
At the end of my questions, I ask if there’s anything they’d like to ask themselves. They look confused. Stupid closer, I know. No, they say, I’d pretty much covered it. Berna, her empty plate in front of her, says, “I don’t know if they were the answers to your questions, but we said what we wanted to say.”
Watch for Kim Ki O’s tentatively forthcoming record on Enfant Terrible and other events they may DJ with their fine selection of ‘80s numbers. They will be bringing their “unconscious” momentum to the Peyote stage on Saturday, September 19th. For more information, lyrics, translations and products, check these sites: www.kimkio.org and http://www.myspace.com/kimkio.
-- Michael Goertzen
-- Photos by Delal Seven
-- Michael Goertzen
-- Photos by Delal Seven
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