Isik Kural

The music of Isik Kural reaches forth from a place of future memory. His humble and intimate songs are collaged from fleeting moments, tinted with literary references and flickers from life’s silent cinema to create an impressionistic snapshot of the world that is perfectly imperfect in its poetry. Isik’s music tunes into tender and liminal states of being where the simple wonder of everyday life peeks through and the imaginary is always ripe for discovery.

Born in Turkey, Isik began making music on a nylon string guitar during his teens, gradually adding field recordings and synthesizers to the mix. From his home in Istanbul he moved to Miami to study music engineering, spent a spell in New York City, and eventually landed in Scotland, where he graduated with a masters in sound design and audiovisual practice from the University of Glasgow.

While on-the-move, Isik’s practice developed by merging traditional songwriting with more experimental approaches. Sometimes a melody was picked out on guitar; other times it emerged from live ambient explorations. Verses sprung from the pulp of literature processed and songs were spun with loops and atmosphere from recordings of the world surrounding.

Isik’s music began circulating with 2019’s As Flurries, an album made from voice, synthesizer, guitar, piano and glockenspiel and released by Italian label Almost Halloween Records. In 2022, Isik shared his first outing for RVNG Intl., in february, an enchanting record built from happenstance loops, vocal collaborations with musician Stephanie Roxanne Ward, pka spefy, and references to texts as sundry as the works of Turkish poet Gulten Akin and Anne Carson’s translation of Sophokles. in february was followed by 2023’s Peaches EP, an instrumental-only reflection on the singular sonic world that Isik inhabits and creates.

On his new record, Moon in Gemini, Isik shares a more vocal-forward sound that builds upon the imagistic instrumental textures heard on in february and Peaches. Meandering through the folk song form, IsIk tells delightfully off-kilter tales brimming with natural imagery and simple reflections on life, working once again with spefy on a number of tracks. Whimsical ambient expressions are interwoven with the pair’s songwriting and these sonic scrapbooks warp and swerve in an unbounded spirit of play.

The album is cloaked in an altogether dreamier atmosphere than in february and peaches, with hushed piano and field recordings further enriched by collaborations with flutist Tenzin Stephen, harpist Kirstin McCarlie and clarinet player Giulia Tamborino. A tender pastiche coalesces across the suite of Moon in Gemini’s fourteen pieces, and Isik invites the listener to daydream as-deep-as-possible.