About

The Band’s Story
“White Cheese” is a mid 70’s-80’s New Wave–Reggae-Rock band from Istanbul.
The songs in our recently released album, the only album in forty years, cover a long time span. Since we started in 1975 all the way up to 2015, some “changes” happened in the world! When we first heard Bowie’s “1984” it seemed so far away!

Tracks 1, 2 and 9 are fairly new and mostly inspired by Gezi Park events. Track 3, Joe, is written in memory of Murad Dunbay our late bassist. Track 4 is a song we did in the late 70’s and appeared on TRT in 1979 in Izzet Oz’s program as a video clip. The whole country watched us (whether they liked it or not) as that was the only TV station then! Track 5 is written for the late Lou Reed who, among many other great musicians, inspired Murad and me the most and not only got us into playing the guitar and forming the band, but taught us how to look at life from a different perspective. Tracks 6/7 are related though 7 is written in memory of Ozgecan Aslan, a young university student, and also dedicated to Deger Deniz, a young musician; both girls were brutally murdered within a few months of each other. Track 8 was inspired by a stanza my mother wrote that basically says “in this temporary life what you own is what you give from your heart.” Track 10 is about pollution, and one of our early 80’s songs. (No, we didn’t know Al Gore then!) Track 11, written in the early 80’s, started with jamming on that bass riff, and is about pre-80’s Turkey, terror between the Left and Right. Ironically history repeats itself in different versions!

Musicians:

Gur Akad: Lead&Electric Guitars/Backing Vocals

Derya Bozkurt: Recording Supervisor/Backing Vocals

S. Celik / Conga drums on track 5

Duygu Demir: Cello

P.J Ducker: Sax on track 5

Faith Fraioli: Backing Vocals on track 5

Sinan Kurtul: Lead&Backing Vocals/Acoustic Guitars/Ebow Guitar/Piano on track 3

Gurcan Onaran: Electric Guitars on ending solos on tracks 1 and 4

Rosie Slater: Backing Vocals on track 5

Volkan Tunc Konya: Bass Guitars/Keyboards/Synth arrangements/Drum Programming

Produced by Serdar Cokuslu

Recorded by Volkan Tunc Konya at Istanbul Piano Studios–Istanbul, TR between 2012-2015, except “Joe” recorded in New York

Mixed by Seth Glassman in New York/www.sethglassman.com

Mastered by Alan Silverman at Arf! Productions, Inc. NYC/www.arfmastering.com

Special thanks to all our families and friends who supported and assisted us in this project.

© 2016 White Cheese