Turkish singer-songwriter Umut Adan and his Italian band Zebânis have released their new album 'Başka Bahar/ Another Spring' (out now via Six Degrees Records). They will tour the UK next month, kicking of in Brighton on 10 April and finishing in London on 16 April.
Born in Istanbul, in an apartment building where five different faiths lived side by side, Umut Adan grew up surrounded by cultural plurality and sonic fellowship. After moving to Italy as a student, he embraced diverse musical styles. A key moment in his career development came when he was invited by Jack White to open his Istanbul concert — a performance that drew the interest of legendary producer Liam Watson (The White Stripes, Elephant), who then brought him to London for recordings. This led to the release of his previous album 'Bahar' (Riverboat Records) which was praised by DownBeat (★★★★) and hailed by Magnet Magazine as best-in-genre.
The new album 'Başka Bahar/ Another Spring' features Umut with his band Zebânis, consisting of Andrea Marazzi, Michele Bussone, and Filippo Gillono, members of Turin’s Pietra Tonale collective. It was written and recorded over several years between Istanbul, Turin, and Brussels, tracking nomadically on a single laptop with portable instruments and leaving in the incidental noises of process. The album fuses protest folk with Anatolian psych, electronics, and field recordings — a transnational sonic collage that feels psychedelic in scope, poetic in tone, hypnotic in flow, and ultimately danceable, whilst making a cohesive, anti-nostalgic statement. Umut Adan describes it like this: “'Başka Bahar' is a collective eruption — rejecting nostalgia, undoing tradition, and transfiguring the political voice into an electronic tempest.”
The album features the two singles:
“Bogotà” (lyrics video HERE) is a hypnotic protest anthem that transforms folk memory into a modern, global groove. Fuzz-drenched guitars, trance-like basslines, and insistent percussion combine into what the band calls danceable dissent: music that makes you move while refusing to bow. “Bogotà” is a song of rebellion against all hierarchies in the world and a cry against the subjugation of human by human.
“Sale Marino” (lyrics video HERE) is the album’s most psych-folk moment, a spell of sound born from the vibrant crossroads of Istanbul, where timeless Anatolian textures meet modern urban melancholy. Written on a ferry drifting between Europe and Asia, “Sale Marino” transforms the rhythm of travel into a contemplative groove. Built through meticulous sonic layering, the song opens and closes on a magnetic riff; between these frames, melodic, prosodic verses flow over a supple, jazz-tinged bassline, while reverb-soaked guitars chase the refractions heard in Istanbul when multiple muezzins call from overlapping neighborhoods — a real-world psychedelia of stone and air. Within the song lives a city that both loves and wounds: salt, fog, fleeting love, and quiet resistance. Beneath its calm surface, “Sale Marino” faces injustice head-on — turning the city’s unrest into motion and its melancholy into something unmistakably human.
To celebrate the album release Umut Adan has shared a new music video for “Khayyām”, the album's closing track and also its only song in English. Musically, a cümbüş-and-guitar riff frames the piece, loping acoustic beat carries it forward, the melody steps up and the noise recedes without vanishing. The result is a luminous hypnosis: the world remains complicated, yet the song insists on staying together, outdoors, in green fields with wine. The closing invocation, “oh, Khayyām,” calls on the Persian poet of the present, of doubt and wine over dogma, an ethical and emotional reminder. What remains is a wry smile and forward pull: beyond bombs, postures and exoticized veneers, choosing love is our smallest political act.