Last Saturday we were alerted to the new release of Ductape’s new album, “Echo Drama.” I’ve been hammered with work last week, so we’re only getting to discuss this music today, but it certainly rewards careful listening! The duo of Furkan and Çağla Güleray had begun operations in the Istanbul Post-Punk milieu beginning in summer of 2020 during high lockdown, but they have not stood idle, with a trio of albums and a brace of singles and EPs to show for their efforts in the years since. They are signed to the same Gothic Swiss Dark Nights label that brought us the last Rain To Rust album, and that means that if you want this music on CD [LPs are also available] it will be a full-on glass mastered disc.

Ductape: Echo Drama SWISS – CD [2024]

1. Red Scar
2. Closer
3. The Unknown
4. Evil Me
5. Veil Of Lies
6. Anafor
7. Divar
8. Insan Sinfonisi

Pulsating synthesizer roped us in with a sound not unlike that of Kim Wilde’s “Kids In America” but the relentless motorik drumming attains an urgency unknown to Kim and we’re quickly swept away in the headlong rush of “Red Scar.” A phalanx of violins were sawing away furiously to create a tsunami of anxiety; always heightening tension without any release. Furkan Güleray’s flanged guitar attacks the song at a perpendicular angle to its driving rhythms while Çağla Güleray’s vocals, on the razor’s edge of both yearning and despair, cast a pall of torch song doom over the proceedings as we can hear in the player below.

The rhythmic chug of the persistent bass line anchored “Closer” to an engine that would not stop. The drum fills propelling the song downhill with a crushing inevitability. Investing the fatalistic song with a paradoxical flow of energy towards the ultimate expression of entropy which awaits us all. The ringing, life-affirming guitar lines of Furkan to the contrary.

Deep-flanged bass from Furkan immediately pulled me into “The Unknown” and the percussive backbeat hooks kept me in suspense for the remainder of the slipstreaming jet stream of the song. Dashes of trebly guitar to contrast with that tar pit bass forming a concentrated bolus of energy that simply wouldn’t quit. As it sped towards its climax, Çağla’s voice was plunging deeper into darker corridors of echo. Tattoos of drums moving us inexorably towards “The Unknown” which managed to even increase its velocity via an expert drop to two beats of rhythm towards its abrupt conclusion. If there were any justice this song would get a 7:30 extended remix to generously deliver its many pleasures…until then the player below will have to suffice.

The trebly swirl of Furkan’s guitar anchored the beautiful, almost folk melodies of “Evil Me” with the curdled synths of Çağla just below its surface offering a bitter counterpoint to the loveliness of the tune. Never has nihilism sounded so life-affirming, for it you pay attention to the lyrics of these songs, once cannot help but be impressed with their unremitting bleakness. As Çağla sings lyrics of “red eyes crawling under your skin, have you seen the evil me, addicted to the pain” we can hear the fatal hurt in her voice in spite of the swirling joy of the music, which drops out at the song’s climax allowing the joyous guitar to have the last word.

Technopop synths and motorik drum machine invested “Veil Of Lies” with a brighter than usual palette as the drum fills guided the song ever forward. Furkan’s flanged guitar and deep bass anchoring Çağla’s yearning vocals to soar aloft on a lyric of rejection and defiance. Listen below.

The sampled pan pipes in the intro to “Anafor” were a surprising callback to the late 80s as the droning guitar textures allowed the bass guitar a prominent role in the song; sung in Turkish this time. The sonorous lamentation of Çağla’s vocal perfectly embodied the bleak fatalism of the lyric. The lovely minor key middle eight of Çağla’s synthesizers offering the only relief in the unremitting closed loop of despair the song offered. And never had despair sounded so beguiling.

“Duvar” took a step back from the speedy tempos of the other songs here to offer a respite in the headlong rush to oblivion on offer. Attaining more of a Cocteau Twins sense of swirling Gothic beauty where the relentless drive of the bass proved to be a powerful undertow to the flowing currents of the song. “Insan Senfonisi” [“Human Symphony”] opted to close out the album with a slower tempo proffering a sense of futility and inevitability as a marching tempo and minor key string patches allowed the degradation of Çağla’s vocals to attain a fatal sense of surrender. I loved how in the song’s fading chords that same synth pulse that anchored “Red Scar” manifested one more time to help create a recursion of the vibe here. Suggesting that the entire album was a cycle from which there was no escape, but when the music was this vivid and transportational, who would want to?

Here at PPM we love music that marries downbeat lyrical content to ebullient music and really, it doesn’t get much darker lyrically than Ductape. They manage to find the affirmation of life in the music that somehow allows us to cope with the grinding wheel of existence even as the words reveal what should result in hopeless nihilism. When heard together, the music and performances result in beauty and even joy without any facile false cheer polluting the emotion. Any joy is fully earned through toil and pain; not dispensed in a candy wrapper.

We are only eight weeks into 2024 but already Bandcamp is yielding compulsively great albums like “Echo Drama” and the glory can be yours on a limited edition LP of 100 copies at €20.00/$22.00/£17.00 to be released on May 1st. If you want a copy on the licorice pizza, get that pre-order in soon. Glass mastered CD in digipak is available now for €15.00/$16.40/£12.75. I now need to find the time to check out their earlier releases. If they are a fraction of what “Echo Drama ” delivers it will be time well spent. You know the score…DJ hit that button.

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