ITunes Chart-Topping Melodic Rocker named Barista Returns With More Music Featuring Notable Session Players
Bahadır Han Eryılmaz, better known as Barista, is an Istanbul-based musician, who has called upon a who’s who of studio musicians to create his latest album anthology, “Open Sesame.” The 26-track opus began its 5 month-long release with “Volume 1: Her Dress” having been released in April 2021. Vol 1 featured the #1 iTunes South Africa hit, “Circular Lives.”
For someone like Barista who never had any formal music training, becoming a musician past his youth created familiar and unfamiliar mixed feelings in him. Barista aims at making music that is satisfying, multi-layered, detailed, and filled with substance.
He strives for the lyrics to convey a theme, a story, an idea, or experience in unity, and to do so with prosody and harmony. These themes are more of individual inner worlds than pop culture.
By collaborating both live in-studio (all instrumentals are recorded live) and through modern tech, the album represents Barista’s vision. The recordings, excluding the Turkish vocals, were made at Carbonite Sound in the ‘musician’s colony’ of Ojai, CA. With features from Jesse Siebenberg (Supertramp, Kenny Loggins), Rudiger (Guns’ Roses, Velvet Revolver), Sara Azriel, (Pink Martini), and Lydia Salnikova (Kenny Rogers, BO) as well as Barista’s musical idol Simon Phillips on drums. All 26 tracks of “Open Sesame” were engineered by Jason Mariani (Kenny Loggins, Mumford & Sons) and released via Turkish indie label MonoPlay Records.
Now, “Open Sesame Volume 2: Press Rewind” has been released. Launched on June 4th, “Volume 2” includes another #1 iTunes track, “Sweet.” Like Vol 1, the 6 song collection features a who’s who of A-list session players.‘Open Sesame’ is the continuation of the two earlier albums published under the alias ‘Barista’ and titled ‘Daydream’ (2014) and ‘57’ (2016). It is the product of 3 years of work. As of now, 39 songs have been recorded and Barista plans on featuring 26 of them in this album, releasing them in recurring volumes. The volumes can be organized in relation to the subgenres of the songs, or, like a TV series it can be spread out over time with several songs every 2 weeks or so.
For someone like Barista who never had any formal music training, becoming a musician past his youth created familiar and unfamiliar mixed feelings in him. Barista aims at making music that is satisfying, multi-layered, detailed, and filled with substance.
He strives for the lyrics to convey a theme, a story, an idea, or experience in unity, and to do so with prosody and harmony. These themes are more of individual inner worlds than pop culture.
By collaborating both live in-studio (all instrumentals are recorded live) and through modern tech, the album represents Barista’s vision. The recordings, excluding the Turkish vocals, were made at Carbonite Sound in the ‘musician’s colony’ of Ojai, CA. With features from Jesse Siebenberg (Supertramp, Kenny Loggins), Rudiger (Guns’ Roses, Velvet Revolver), Sara Azriel, (Pink Martini), and Lydia Salnikova (Kenny Rogers, BO) as well as Barista’s musical idol Simon Phillips on drums. All 26 tracks of “Open Sesame” were engineered by Jason Mariani (Kenny Loggins, Mumford & Sons) and released via Turkish indie label MonoPlay Records.
TRACKLISTING
- Haze
- Start
- Statement
- Sweet
- Nothing Left
- Apology
