23-12-2014
STORMWIND
FANZINE ISSUE 2
CENOTAPH
INTERVIEW
SW: Hi Bulent, how are you bro? Thanks for accepting our interview. It
will be our pleasure to hear some stuff about the early days of Cenotaph.
Please tell us about the creation of the band.
Bülent: Hey ! Thanks bro,
appreciate the opportunity, my first interview in more than 15 years J
First I would
like to clarify any confusion this may cause:I am no way associated with the current band Cenotaph. Their last album
was great, I followed the other releases over the years as well but that’s
about it for me, that’s not my band. So if you are interested in old Cenotaph
just relax and enjoy the ride otherwise you can skip to the next page now! J
The old Cenotaph
was active from 1994-2000 with original members Bulent, Cem, Batu and Coskun.
We recorded two albums “Voluptuously Minced” (96) and “Puked Genital Purulency”
(99) and I wrote most of the songs which may not be so common for a bass
player..
Ok here we go,
rejoice old Turkish (farts) scene veterans and for others please allow me to
bore you to tears; this goes all the way back to 94... Angelskull guitarist
Unsal from Antalya moved to Ankara
Later on Bulent
from Suicide took over the drum duties and Umut became the second vocalist. At
this point we had two front men; Batu was doing the growls while Umut was
responsible for the screams. We recorded the first demo Life Immortal (95) with
this line up.
For the second
demo “promo 96” we had Cem on drums who had played for Diabolic Yard and
Witchtrap previously. Umut was no longer with the band. This line up also
recorded the first two albums.
Both of these
demos can be found on the “Re-puked Purulency” cd as bonus tracks….
One more cd with
the demo & rehearsal tracks is available from Sevared Records. But I would
go with the re-puked option because I had the master tapes to all those
recordings and was not involved with the other release. Probably the tracks on
that one got extracted from some old worn out tapes.
SW: I saw your band in a
magazine called ‘Rock Kazanı’ which included news about your first live
performance. That only picture which taken at concert was amazing. When I saw
that, I wished that if was there. It should be in 1991 or 1992. Your music was
surely so aggressive for Turkish scene of those days. What was the reaction of
fans at that concert?
Bülent: Yes that picture
is from 94 and was our first gig. It makes us look like real pros wrecking the
stage hahahaJ…but there are of course two sides
to the story...This was the very first line up I mentioned above and the band
had been active only for a couple of months at the time of this gig. We had
limited number of songs and I don’t think the performance was that great.
However, the songs at the time reflected our capacity as musicians and they
wereslower, may be a little melodic and more accessible too. All of these
combined added to an acceptable performance and got a good reaction from the
crowd which was about 1200 people!
The other bands
on the bill were; Suicide, Scalprum and Slamdive. Also, Catacombed from Bursa
SW: Cenotaph released a
Picture Disc LP from Sevared Records. The release includes an early unknown
recording of the band. What was the reaction from the fans for this release?
Bülent: We recorded the
album “Puked Genital Purulency” two times. Second recording got released by
Hammer Muzik on MC & CD formats in 99. The first one never saw the daylight
as the mix and recording quality was not that good. The term “good” here is relative and highly
questionable. So it took a good 18 years to realize that it was not that bad
but actually uncomfortable and disturbing. As soon as the perception was fixed
we had it released on cd and picture disc formats. The response was a mixed
bag. Some people were very interested from the beginning and some were quite
pissed off J ...the second “some” kept
questioning the quality of this newly surfaced record and compared it to their
beloved official “puked genital purulency” release...why a forgotten version of
puked genital purulency, why not the original record itself ?...
Simple: for me
this one is more brutal and level of ferocity is incomparable. I am a collector
of raw/ harsh sounding records and fell in love with this one after hearing it
for the first time in 15 years. And secondly I do not have the rights and
original tapes, artwork, design files etc. for the official version of the
album “puked genital purulency”, it all belongs to Hammer Music and if they
want to release it on vinyl of course they are more than welcome...
SW: I think you have had
multiple contacts for the LP release from beginning to end and you worked hard
for this to happen. Tell us the about the process.
Bülent: The process was
quite involved. From the beginning to end I had Sevared Records in mind.
However, this label is more focused on cd releases and he didn’t have much
experience with vinyl and on top all that I knew he was pretty uncomfortable
with the artwork of the cd version of this release. So I had to be pretty
strategic because never got a straight “yes” from him regarding the picture
disc. I talked to multiple record labels and worked with two artists. Mike
Hrubovcak and Jon Zig. Mike had already done the cd artwork so he just changed
a couple of things and made it ready for a picture disc release. Jon provided
me two types of artwork after getting into some heavy discussions on what I am
looking for. One was a complete oil painting and the other one was a black
& white drawing.
The oil painting
is extremely detailed and dark. Unless you put the flash light on it like I did
here the details do not come out. So it could have become a recipe for disaster
at the pressing stage. I decided to go with the black & white drawing
because it was clear, not very complicated and was able to leave a memorable
impression upon first look. So he colored that with Photoshop and after many
many iterations on design details involving; colors, fonts, band member pictures
and their exact locations we ended up with the final design you see down below
on my turntable.
Mike’s design is
below as well. Once I got these ready it was kind of slam dunk, I forwarded
both to Sevared Recs and got the ok to move forward with Jon’s design.
There was one
more problem to solve thoughL....
Because a vinyl
especially a picture disc release is a pretty complicated process both design
and sound quality wise, I wanted to be in charge of everything at every step of
the process. But of course you cannot ask a label to release your stuff and
tell them that you want to do everything yourself right?
Well, that’s exactly what happened here for this release fortunately
J I talked to bunch of pressing
plants, talked about options, got prices and some more. Eventually I ended up
with Pirates Pressing. With the suggestion from label we decided to add a
jacket and a poly bag. The biggest decision was on the 33 vs 45 rpm. As you may
know the last track (most inner) on vinyl gets distorted depending on how close
it gets to the spindle. In order to make sure that does not happen I had to
work out the track order and their timings and did some research as well to
figure out the best option.
On the sound: I had the original recording on a DAT tape. This was
mixed and mastered in 97. Because I did not have the source tape with the
guitars, vocal, drums etc. on separate channels, the only option was to master
this again for the vinyl without changing things much.
I sent the DAT
tape to Ron Vento of Aurora Borealis. He runs a professional studio for all
types of music and he is pretty good at what he is doing. So he extracted the
ancient record and mastered it again. The sound level has gone up and we ended
up with a richer fuller sound unlike the cd version of this release. When you
hear it for the first time bass is upfront but after a couple of minutes you
start hearing the guitars, layers of vocals and other details. Briefly, all the
details become available to the dedicated listener after some time. I am quite
satisfied with the sound. And the vinyl made it sound even better.
After taking
care of all these little details, I submitted the newly mastered record to the
pressing plant along with the jacket and vinyl design. My final task was to
write a description of the release to be featured on Sevared web page…
SW: I know you are not in
the band anymore but you are still in the music and playing bass guitar. Do you
play for other bands or do you have plan about playing in a band? And my other
question attached to these; will you play for Cenotaph again in the future?
Bülent: I have been living
in US for about 15 years now and had the opportunity to play with a couple of
bands.Sacrocurse, Aversion to Life and Epic Death are some of them. But seems
like my job and kids are almost always getting in the way. I have a couple of
songs on my own that I practice from time to time. Probably that’s gonna be it
for quite some time L On the Cenotaph
frontit gets a little hairy JI tend
to make a strong distinction between the old Cenotaph and new Cenotaph and
perceive them as completely unrelated entities... sadly sharing the same name
and logo... My Cenotaph was Batu, Cem, Coskun and myself as the main song
writer...so in that regard Cenotaph is long gone and dead...Having said that;
hats off to Batu who kept the flame burning for so many years and these two
releases definitely benefited from that sustained existence J
SW: You are living in USA
Bülent: Over thelast 10-15
years Turkish scene has changed a lot. We have a lot of great bands releasing
products through European and American labels. I think things would have been
easier if they were here. There would be more networking opportunities at
shows, festivals etc…even if your music is good another big chunk of the
business is how you sell it..So in that regard definitely being closer to all
these labels, zines, magazines, writers would make things easier/ faster and
better if you know your way around.
SW: These are my questions
bro. Do you have last words to add?
Bülent: Yep, sureJ ….I don’t want to come across asanarcissistic guy but to this day I
still do believe that to some extend the uniqueness of puked genital purulency
is impossible to capture. That is not because we were great musicians (actually
we never had the proper training) but the album was mostly written on bass with
minimum tremolo/ picking and dependent upon the philosophy of discontinuity of
time and space. That is; the songs do not flow…each song is broken down to its
individual unrelated riffs and there is discontinuity. Cem is a great drummer and this type of
structure let him compose his own songs on top of mine with the drums. Batu did
the same on the first recording “re-puked purulency” with layers of vocals by
completely eliminating the words…AaanyhowJ…If you want to have a copy of “Re-puked
Purulency” picture disc it may still be available from Iron Bonehead (Germany)
for those of you closer to Europe. If you are in the states Sevared Recs, Hells
Headbangers and NWN should have it...
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