She Past Away Emails Ahead of Elysium Sell-Out

Like Robert Smith leading Joy Division, Turkish synth duo She Past Away makes instant converts wherever Volkan Caner (v/b) and Doruk Öztürkcan (k) touch down. Three dozen shows between now and the end of 2019 lands date number five at Elysium on Saturday. Long sold out, the performance proved enough to e-query the group’s producer, Öztürkcan.

He Looked Askanz: (l-r) Doruk Öztürkcan and Volkan Caner

Austin Chronicle: Austin is the fifth show on your next five months of touring. How did that come about?

Doruk Öztürkcan: Texas has a big scene for our type of music apparently. We could already feel this through our social media for years. It’s one of the shows that sold out almost immediately.

AC: Once when Radiohead visited here, they shopped at Switched On, our “synthesizer dream space, storefront, repair spa.” What are the synth capitals of the global synthesizer network?

DÖ: Well, we get our stuff from synthesizer.gr. They’re the coolest synth shop in Europe as far as we’re concerned and good friends. Highly recommended and they ship worldwide.

AC: Your website states: “She Past Away is dark-wave with a reworked 80’s sound.” Could you please list some Eighties albums without which SPA might not exist?

DÖ: Sisters of Mercy, First and Last and Always
Sisters of Mercy, Some Girls Wander by Mistake
DAF, Allows ist gut
The Cure, Faith
The Cure, Pornography
Asylum Party, Borderline

AC: Your third and latest album, Disko Anksiyete, streamlines, tightens, coalesces the sound of She Past Away. What does that evolutionary arc look like internally – to y’all?

DÖ: Well, it’s hard to judge ourselves. In every album we are trying to bring more of our influences and express ourselves in different ways. The arc appears only after you have released the albums and see it all in unity.

AC: As producer, why does the alchemy of beats, a keyboard/vocal melody, and bass fuse so intrinsically into the elasticity of a group such as yours?

DÖ: That begins with Volkan’s song writing. His lines work with each other in a musically magical way already. That leaves me little to do honestly.

AC: Is it correct that you and Volkan are split between Barcelona, Spain, and Athens, Greece? If so, how did that come to past (sorry) and how’s it working?

DÖ: We both used to live in Istanbul. Even then we would work over the net sending each other recordings and drafts. We lived in far parts of the town and it wasn’t practical to visit each other. So now we keep the same tradition and get together only for recording.

AC: Austin is idyllic mostly – if segregated and privileged – but America is currently ripping down the middle. What’s it like where She Past Away originated?

DÖ: Hahaha, the same :) What happens now in U.S. was already happening in Turkey 10 years ago. Remember the Gezi protests back in 2012.