Genius amplified
EXPERIMENTAL music artist İnal Bilsel has released a new video for his song Alive Again. The award-winning composer of classical and contemporary electronic music, will also play alongside long-time collaborator Emre Yazgın as Side Effect at the South’s Lefkosia Loop Festival next week.
Under the Epic İstanbul label — a division of Sony Music Entertainment Turkey — Alive Again features vocals from Aycan Garip and is from Mr Bilsel’s latest album, Paradise Lost, which hit the top of the iTunes charts in the electronic genre in January.
The video sees the artist, exploring a derelict building in Cyprus, as a traveller stumbling upon a 1987 issue of Time Out magazine. It follows the post-nuclear war theme of his Paradise Lost “movie”, also released on the label’s YouTube channel this month, which is a 22-minute film depicting the story of the album in visual terms. The musician, who also incorporates visuals and conceptualised ideas in his work, starts with a preamble about virtual reality company Simex, which produces SimTapes to transport users to different worlds, including one near the ruins of “Fabulous Varosha” — a post-apocalypticthemed pre-war amusement park.
Mr Bilsel’s debut album, A New Beginning, was released in 2009. Inspired by the possibility of life existing on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, the album narrates within a musical context the story of life beginning and ending on a planet.
The artiste, currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at Royal Holloway, University of London, takes the stage as Side Effect, at the Theatro Dentro in South Nicosia, on Friday at 9pm. Tickets cost 15 euros.
Organised by Louvana Records, the Lefkosia Loop Festival 2018 runs from Thursday to next Saturday at various venues. A workshop, documentary screening and live performances will feature artists from Cyprus, UK, Finland and Greece. For full details and tickets, visit www.lefkosialoopfestival/tickets.