I sing nature with notes

Tugce Celik

Oytun Bektaş's one-man musical project, Tir, will not be able to meet music lovers in Turkey due to the organizers' decision to postpone their concerts in Istanbul and Ankara until 2026 due to security and logistical reasons. Before the postponement, we spoke with Bektaş about Tir and explored the impact of migration on his artistic production and his perspective on music.

Leaving his Turkish heritage behind and migrating to Sydney, Australia, around middle age, it's possible to trace the artist's mind and soul through his notes and intertwined, deep vocals. Bektaş, in his one-man musical project Tir, is both a composer, performer, and producer. Bektaş summarizes his approach to music as follows: "Music isn't a performance for me; it's an unadorned, direct form of expression. Labels like dark folk or synth often remain on the shallow edges of this narrative. Because I'm addressing an atmosphere rather than a genre. That atmosphere contains history: loneliness, heaviness, earth, and sometimes the color of an old photograph."

"Genres like dark folk and dungeon synth still have a limited audience in Turkey, but that doesn't mean they don't have potential," Bektaş says, emphasizing that these music aren't meant to be quickly consumed and forgotten; they're meant to be listened to slowly, absorbed, and established over time. Bektaş says, "I don't chase crowds; reaching the right people is the most meaningful response for me. My creative process follows this. Sometimes I'm walking down the street, sometimes I'm gazing at the sky or reading a book... Everything begins with silence; I'm also nourished by the city, but my connection with nature and the universe is stronger. I don't want to be caught up in the rush of anything; when I rush, what emerges isn't my own. So, let the process take as long as it takes."

TIME WORKS DIFFERENTLY

Bektaş also describes his relationship with the migration of the atmosphere he creates by vocalizing nature with notes. “Living in Australia deepens the sounds even more,” he says, continuing: “Time flows at a different rhythm here; it’s as if a silence from the ’80s and ’90s still hangs in the air. The crowds arrive from afar, the world turns more slowly. While this isolation can sometimes verge on madness, it also compels a creative introspection. Perhaps without this loneliness, Tir wouldn’t have such a deeply rooted, inner narrative.” Reflecting on the impact of his perception of time on his musical production, the artist explains, “I think of time as a cyclical structure; so it feels natural for me to situate the old and the new in the same room. The traditional motifs I use in Tir stand like monuments, and the synth layers that rain down on them are the sound of the unknown. The fact that the two exist side by side, without conflict, complementing each other, has always presented me with an aesthetic playground.”

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He combined mythology with electronic music

Bektaş also made an album for Göbeklitepe in Urfa. The artist explains: “Sometimes I feel history like a hum coming from underground. 'Ruins of Xibalba' was born out of my desire to follow that hum. Göbeklitepe is the oldest known monument in human history; one of the first traces of community and consciousness. Those stones are a language bequeathed to time, the first echoes of an ancient system of thought. I wanted to reinterpret its silent meaning through the contemporary language of electronic music. At first glance, it seems contradictory: bringing together the old and the new, mythology and the machine. But the most powerful aspect of art is its ability to bridge different eras. If we don't construct the past with today's tools, it remains merely a museum object. Invoking the wisdom of the cosmos and the memory of the land within the same structure is like an offering to me.”