Bersarin Quartett - Bersarin Quartett (Lidar)

With some albums, you realize within a few seconds that here you have come across something really special. It is music that touches you straight away. The debut album by the Bersarin Quartett released in February this year, is one of these albums.Little is known about the Bersarin Quartett apart from the fact that it’s a one man band with the name Thomas, hailing from Münster, Germany. Bersarin Quartett’s debut is a journey. It will take you trough ten tracks (just under an hour) of layered classical and ambient electronic moods. It’s lush and grand without being overly dramatic, as if it was the soundtrack of an imaginary emotional film epic. Thomas himself calls his music “imaginary fictional filmscores“. And it is hardly possible to come up with a more apt term. 10 tracks for 10 movies that have yet to be shot.The second half of the album is arguably more diverse. Die Dinge Sind Nie So Wie Sie Sing, introduces horns and sturdy double bass, but still the lead orchestral lines remain immoveable and monotonously static. The track Nachtblind is more effective, as echoing piano chords join violin strings, with a more imaginative percussive element sitting beneath the arrangement, whilst Endlich Am Ziel introduces reverbed guitars amidst the brazen strings, finally we have a sense of undulation and tangible emotion.

Whether Bersarin Quartet’s second half comeback is enough to rouse the listener into acclaim is questionable, there’s doubtless a talented individual trying hard to express some contemplative sentiments, it’s just that transmitting that effectively is sometimes made to look easier than it actually is. Bersarin Quartett can appear a pale imitation next to today’s buxom choice of modern ambient soundtrack composers, however, as long as you don’t expect too much, you should find it mildly enjoyable.,

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, c. 1916 © 

Atatürk was a Turkish nationalist leader and founder and first president of the republic of Turkey.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in 1881 in Salonika (now Thessaloniki) in what was then the Ottoman Empire. His father was a minor official and later a timber merchant. When Atatürk was 12, he was sent to military school and then to the military academy in Istanbul, graduating in 1905.

In 1911, he served against the Italians in Libya and then in the Balkan Wars (1912 - 1913). He made his military reputation repelling the Allied invasion at the Dardanelles in 1915.

In May 1919, Atatürk began a nationalist revolution in Anatolia, organising resistance to the peace settlement imposed on Turkey by the victorious Allies. This was particularly focused on resisting Greek attempts to seize Smyrna and its hinterland. Victory over the Greeks enabled him to secure revision of the peace settlement in the Treaty of Lausanne.

In 1921, Atatürk established a provisional government in Ankara. The following year the Ottoman Sultanate was formally abolished and, in 1923, Turkey became a secular republic with Atatürk as its president. He established a single party regime that lasted almost without interruption until 1945.

He launched a programme of revolutionary social and political reform to modernise Turkey. These reforms included the emancipation of women, the abolition of all Islamic institutions and the introduction of Western legal codes, dress, calendar and alphabet, replacing the Arabic script with a Latin one. Abroad he pursued a policy of neutrality, establishing friendly relations with Turkey’s neighbours.

In 1935, when surnames were introduced in Turkey, he was given the name Atatürk, meaning ‘Father of the Turks’. He died on 10 November 1938.