MIRCAN
NUMINOSUM
An imaginative musical journey in the warm spring rains with MIRCAN.
MIRCAN performs with the English improvised jazz group Limbo
MIRCAN intertwined with poetry, philosophy, mysticism and music.
MIRCAN embarks on an enchanting journey of imagination with LIMBO, the improvising jazz group from Bristol in England in her new album, NUMINOSUM.
The journey begins with an innocent but uncanny voice that oozes out of a rainy darkness and echoes from the void, “The day is done and the darkness falls from the wings of night.” When left alone with rain and darkness, you seem to see a barely perceptible light shining from far away and when you hear the accordion, the music takes you gently by the hand and draws you into the dream.
This new album from MIRCAN opens with lines from Mr. Longfellow’s poem entitled Waif and blends these with her own words and those of Mevlana about love. However, in a piece she entitled Wordless, composed entirely of voice and transcending the relationship between music and language, she attains to levels of dreams that lead to eternity and even the “om” sound that is the basis of meditation; she then consoles herself and the listener again with words from Mevlana. She reminds us once again that the human voice is the warmest, most heartfelt instrument with this piece featuring her own voice.
In the piece entitled Silence in Cxala, she takes her fans back to the village of Megrel where she grew up a reserved and attentive listener, explaining her perception of silence and making allusion to John Cage’s piece 4:33.
Compositions like Tonight I Long For Rest, with lyrics written by Mircan, This is Love in the words of Mevlana, and Water and Wine are blended with jazz modalities to express the different types of love.
In her lyrics for Lizards Know, we listen to the confessions of a woman who shares the secret of love with mirrors, nettle berry, lizards and her lover. With her compliant, subservient voice that envelopes you like velvet melancholy, she shares the murder of love and innocence with the lizards in the words, “my white silk gown is torn.”
MIRCAN continues to achieve important breakthroughs in the field, delighting mothers and babies with her album Our Lullabys, the first compilation of Anatolian lullabies in our country. She immediately turned around and released her album Ashes in 2005, introducing British musicians to local Turkish experts to blaze her own unique trail in the field of World Music by presenting traditional Anatolian, Bosnian and Georgian folk songs on a universal platform. At the end of 2006, she released Sâlâ, which was critically acclaimed both at home and abroad as an example of how her music reflects her unique and avant-garde perception of music, art and life. FOLK ROOTS magazine, an authoritative voice in the field of world music, heaped praise upon the album Sâlâ and MIRCAN continues to produce increasingly bold albums as she explores the boundaries of freedom with the assistance of outstanding musicians and sound engineers. After her next album, OUTIM, which is being prepared for release, in 2009 MIRCAN will vanish from the scene for a while to pursue academics and complete a Masters and Doctoral degree at a university in England in the field of ethnomusicology.
MIRCAN did the recordings for the album NUMINOSUM with Jim Barr, award-winning bass guitarist for the renowned British group PORTISHEAD. She worked on the production with producer, composer and trumpeter, Roger Mills. The album\'s sound effects and mastering were done at Songphonic Records by Osman Kent in England.
Following NUMINOSUM, music stores will be carrying her album OUTIM (Once Upon a Time in Mingrelia), which was completed with the same team.
NUMINOSUM is a warm, dreamy musical effort but it is also a work of art that will leave an acerbic aftertaste. UCM presents the album in a jacket design with visuals that complement the content.
NUMINOSUM carpets your path with spring flowers bursting from the ground and a rainbow after the storm, inviting you to dive deep into love and dreams.
*Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (An American writer and poet who lived from February 27, 1807 to March 24, 1882)
REVIEW BY CYCLIC DEFROST MAGAZINE
Turkish vocalist / songwriter Mircan Kaya apparently grew up in a mountain village in the Black Sea Region, singing traditional songs at weddings and ceremonies from an early age, before her later years at university saw her singing and playing guitar in a number of indie-rock bands. While Kaya’s two preceding albums, 2005’s ‘Kul’ and 2006’s ‘Sala’ saw her working primarily with traditional Turkish music, this fourth artist album on UCM sees her collaborating with Bristol-based six-piece Limbo (whose ranks include trumpeter Roger Mills and Portishead alumni Jim Barr) for ten tracks that see her singing completely in English for the first time. Opening track ‘Waif’ almost suggests an ambient / World Music-centred listen ahead, as Kaya’s reverb-heavy vocals soar out from a backdrop of sampled rain and thunder, the beatless and slightly ominous setting providing the perfect counterpoint to her eerie high notes, before the title track injects a sense of Balkan forlorn-ness, complete with weeping violins, piano keys and bass clarinets as Kaya’s folk-tinged lyrics detail the story of a lover passed – indeed, the whole atmosphere generated particularly recalls Dead Can Dance’s re-reading of ‘I Am Stretched On Your Grave.’
From there, ‘Tonight I Long For Rest’ sees proceedings getting smokier and more jazz-centred, as muted trumpets and slow brushed snares trace a path beneath Kaya’s vaguely Grace Slick-esque delivery, shortly before slo-core indie guitar chords reminiscent of Low begin to rise up in the mix, while the aptly-titled ‘Wordless’ sees her layering her vocal textures into an unearthly wall of harmony amidst synthetic ambience, in what’s easily one of the most intriguing moments on offer here. ‘To Take A Step Without Feet’ represents perhaps this album’s one real miss-step, offering up a flirtation with boogie-woogie piano that feels disturbingly like the sort of thing that might end up on Jools Holland’s TV show, though it’s nicely made up for by the considerably more subtle ‘Crickets’ Song – Silence In Cxala’, which curiously enough offers up an extended ambient segue completely constructed around the sampled sounds of crickets and rain falling on leaves. While ‘Numinosum’ sometimes feels a little undecided as to the sort of album it’s trying to be, for this most part its eclecticism results in a consistently interesting listen.
Chris Downtown
REVIEWS
AKSAM NEWSPAPER
The clear sound of positive sorrow
We are in the middle of spring, but the sun keeps poking its head out and then hiding again. “If only it would rain, we would feel better,” we say. Well I am now holding a sweetly sorrowful album in my hands that is just the thing to listen to while waiting for the rain. After putting out 4 unusual albums with topics like variations on lullabies and an album in the Laz language, Mircan is back again with her 5th album, Numinosum, under the UCM label. Mircan is not known very well in Turkey, but she is very popular internationally. Her music is highly acclaimed by influential music critics. Mircan, who is also an earthquake engineer, began singing songs when she was two and a half years old. Let’s not forget that the recordings were done with the bassist from Portishead… Full of jazz tones, natural and ethnic sounds, Numinosum promises a great deal to the listener. When you start listening to the album, all you will want to do is lie down in a hammock and let the rain fall on you. We met together to listen to the album and to Mircan’s story.
· I hear that you were so quiet as a child that you were almost like a mute. However, even at that age you were singing adult songs. Could you tell us a little about that period of your life?
I spent my childhood in a wild and natural environment. All of the sounds from that time of my life were so eerie and frightening they would make anyone keep their mouth shut. To me, listening was the most important thing to do. The sound of voices around me always telling stories, the rhythmic sound from the ayran barrel, lullabies, the sound of nature… My personality was deeply influenced by a region where people with different cultures and languages coexisted and where we were surrounded by the wilds of nature. Batumi was a place that both bound me to it and made me want to leave. All of my journeys are rooted in these dreamy lands of my childhood.
· You were quite successful as a student also. What was the breaking point for you as an artist?
The traumas we experience in life are breaking points. After an emotional trauma after the loss of two beloved ones, I decided to spend more time playing music and to not hide my music and myself. When I lost two people I loved, I took my guitar, left home and decided to play music differently.
· You have produced unique albums playing jazz with Laz lyrics and singing lullabies in different formats. Why are you interested in such distinctive projects?
A good work of art should provide the viewer with a different viewpoint. I have never been interested in any other kind of work. That is the real reason I have been rather late in coming out. I waited until I was fully equipped in every way to reproduce the music inside of me. I have many stories to tell and I am working to faithfully transpose those stories into music.
I HAVE MANY STORIES TO TELL
· Regarding your album, what differences will listeners notice between this album and the others?
The dominant emotion in my music is sorrow. There is sorrow in Numinosum too, but it is a positive sorrow. It is an album that embraces life and which describes different states of love that have been unified with nature. The album’s name and theme come from a psychological term with a Latin root that describes that which is visible and invisible, both material and mystical. It has a new, youthful sound. We recorded it in England with Limbo, a jazz group that does great improvisation.
· After the third song on the album, the style of the songs changes every other song. The music gets more intense and then it goes back to a softer tone. What is the reason for that?
I usually focus on a single theme on my albums. Because each album is an expression of the emotions inside me, the songs on Numinosum are a musical expression of those emotions. They are an effort to describe the different moods that romantic love experiences. Sometimes it is passionate, like in Water and Wine, sometimes it fades away, like in Wordless, sometimes it hangs its head like in Lizards Know, and sometimes it is without hope, like in Numinosum.
Interview by
BURAK SOYER April 20, 2008
RADIKAL Newspaper Culture&Art
Numinosum
In her new album, Numinosum, Mircan combines sounds from different regions of the world. Muammer Ketencoğlu is a guest artist who accompanies Mircan with the Bristol based group Limbo on the album. Released by UCM, the album features 10 songs. Numinosum / Mircan with Limbo / UCM Production
Radikal 2
SABAH Newspaper
Mircan Kaya
Numinosum-Mircan With Limbo / UCM
Is it just me or have artists have become increasingly interested in Adorno, Nietzsche and Edward Said recently? It did not surprise me to find these names as I looked over Mircan’s latest release – a doleful, sorrowful and melodramatic album titled Numinosum. What surprised me was to find these same names on the ‘best of’ list put out by teenage indie rock group Sakin. However, it seems that they have both come out of the same mould. Just great. If you do not feel repulsed when the topic of world music comes up, if you travel the way of love always and only, if the feeling of warm summer rain on your face makes you feel good all over, if you enjoy walking barefooted on the ground and take pleasure in wiggling your toes in the dirt, then this album is just for you. Mircan Kaya is an earthquake engineer originally from Batumi who revealed her musical perspective and the analytical side of her personality in her previous albums, Bizim Ninniler (Our Lullabys) and Kül (Ashes). Numinosum is in English. Sometimes this album has a jazz flavour but overall it has a Loreena McKennitt kind of sound. It was recorded in Bristol with the English jazz group Limbo. I found it to be very carefully engineered, well-produced and an overall success. I also enjoyed the album cover made from shiny cardstock coated with clear plastic and the booklet inside, which you don’t often see these days. In the end, though, internal journeys get on my nerves. That is all I have to say as a pitiful, middle-aged writer who is caught up in worldly pleasures.
April 18, 2008 Oğuz Ayar
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