Turkish-Anglo chap and former Fridge man, Adem Ilhan does what his former band member refuses to do and compiles arguably his most assessable and straightforward album to date. That’s not to say that his last album, ‘Love and Other Planets’ wasn’t accessible, just that you needed a fairly complex route map to negotiate your way around its occasionally circuitous nu-folk tangents. This time it’s different. This time we get a glimpse of the man behind the blindingly complex arrangements and the endlessly recursive science of his art. This time it has tunes and everything.
Self-produced and self-played, ‘Takes’ reveals Adem’s motherboard – a dozen tracks that were released between 1991-2001 when Adem was growing up – reimagined, restrung and regurgitated in his usual chiming and ever so slightly dislocated manner. And without going completely overboard, the result is really quite beautiful, the sum total of a man’s soul thrashed out on hand-me-down instruments and junk-shop recording budgets. Standouts include ‘To Cure A Weakling Child + Boy/Girl Song’ (Aphex Twin), ‘Unravel’ (Bjork) and ‘Invisible Man’ (The Breeders).
’Takes’ boasts the rarest of things: a covers album that frequently surpasses the brilliance of its source-material.