The Guitar Player's Resource
Billed as one of Turkey's first instrumental guitarists, Serdar Oztop's first CD Sukut is a stunning example of the compositional and playing ability of this artist. Featuring ten instrumentals, the album offers blazing, cleanly and confidently played axework while containing enough surprises and twists to stand up to repeated listenings. Oztop was trained as an engineer, so the production and recording is top notch. Graceful ballads such as "Kalabaligin Ortasinda" alternate with ethnically enriched pieces ("Yeni Gun"), and fierce, all-out-pedal-to-the-floor rockers ("Azraille Dans"). Oztop has mastered the fine art of balancing memorable, melodic and harmonized guitar lines with impressively fluid, smoking speed solos, and that alone is enough to highly recommend Sukut to guitar fans.
Serdar was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1970. His introduction to music came from playing the mandolin in primary school. Serdar picked up the electric guitar in high school, and later started to play original compositions with his first band, Exon, which I formed in the beginning of his years at university. After he graduated from the electronics school at Bogazici University, he started working in Spectrum Recording Studio as a sound engineer, also joining the Turkish rock band "Kesmeseker" Serdar later set up a home studio, continued my studies as a producer-arranger. In a short time, he had the chance to work with Turkey's top rock stars and became a well known producer and guitarist.
Oztop continues to gig around the Istanbul area and hopes to make a big splash all over the world with his instrumental release.
Serdar Oztop
Turkey
Web site: www.serdaroztop.com