Les Mogol - 1971 - Dances and Rhythms of Turkey of Yesterday and Today

Quality: 3.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 2.75 out of 5

As the trip-o-meter indicates, this is far from the most psychedelic thing you'll hear at the Psychedelic Garage. Les Mogol were a group of Turkish string players focused for the most part on the folk styles of their native country. This was the late 60's, however, and these young fellows tried to add a bit of psychedelic flourish to keep up with the times. Unlike typical psychedelic exploitation, it works really well on this album and presents an interesting counterpoint to the more straight ahead stuff.

"Lorke," which is the first full song on the album, is about as psychedelic as the album gets with a Turkish melody played on organ glides upon trance-like percussion. It's a pretty cool melding of styles. "Ilgaz" follows with a style more representative of the album. The tune comes across as having roots in Turkish folk, but the structure and instrumentation is a nod toward the San Francisco rock sound. Most of the highlights come closer to the end of the album. "Ziganalar'dan Gecis" fares well by focusing on some of the more exotic string instruments. "Mogol Halay" ups the psych quotient with some fuzzed-out guitar leads and "Cigrik" comes across as a proper psychedelic pop song.

The execution is not quite as assured as it could be, and there are some noticible bland stretches on this album, but it's worth a listen or two for the highlight. We practically demand that modern music makes an attempt at genre bending, but this is pretty far ahead of the curve in that respect, and it make Les Mogol historically interesting if nothing else.