TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE is a deeply personal album that tells the story of the band’s decision to leave their hometown, Istanbul, and move to Vancouver to pursue a different life. It’s thematically rooted in history and politics, the psychological condition of the people who grew up being subjected to them. We took this chance to learn more about this story and let the trio tell it in their own words.
This album is about a move, a big one. About what leads up to it, and what comes after.
Twenty Million people are: Bah Sarp – Vox, guitar, Brian Vincer – Bass, Batu Bekmen – Drums
The first half of the album deals with the exploitation, the commonplace fears, the nostalgia, and the disillusion that come with a decision to change your place of living. What comes after is living, and that’s what the second half is. “Entitlement to regret, aspirations to refuse, expectations to reality, uncertainty to anger.”.
The βNew Romeβ, track by track story, by TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE
βNew Romeβ is the product and expression of a weird batch of feelings that remained pent-up inside the three of us for years, some for all our lives. Thereβs anger, dejection, gloom, and something that I can only call a dark and careful hope. You know, all the fun and colorful backwash of dealing with socially inherited century-old resentments and grudges that will only make sense when I tell you that Bah (guitars, vox) and I (Batu, drums) are from Istanbul, and we left it to build new lives in Vancouver, only to meet Brian (bass) and find in him a fellow harbourer of past grievances. All that is to say that this album is about a move, what leads up to it, and what comes after.
My spouse Duygu (whoβs the artist behind the cover art) and I moved to Vancouver in the very fateful month of February 2020, three-weeks before the pandemic was declared, followed by lockdowns, etc. For three months, we were stuck in an apartment that we were extremely lucky to find but drained our savings account pretty quickly nonetheless, applying to every single job ad. I finally landed a job at UPS unloading trucks, and while I was working there I started reading about migrant workers and their families who went to Germany as guest workers (Gastarbeiter) between the 1950s and the 1970s. A phrase used by the narrator of a documentary made by BBC in 1973 neatly summed up everything I came to feel about the whole thing. βFactory Fodderβ opens the album. Itβs a three-plus-minute ride of spasmodic anger, filled with sampled and recreated train sounds. Itβs also the first song we wrote for the album, and the song that more or less set the course for our sound.
Writing for βNew Romeβ was an interesting process of translation, in that we wanted every song to have a single, distinct sonic statement that would reflect our collective sentiment on an issue. βBroken Middlefingerβ is a prime example of this: Bah came up with the opening riff right after a conversation where we talked about the George Floyd protests and the Capitol Attack in relation to our own experiences with governmental power, the consequences of which we mentally and physically carry.
To reflect the push-and-pull feeling of protest and consequence, we wanted to have an anti-chorus where the frantic energy would suddenly drop. clipping.βs βKnees on the Groundβ was a massive influence, so was βSomething Underneathβ (where I neatly swiped the title from, tee hee). People who tell others to stay and fight for their country donβt always know that sometimes your country wonβt even let you be disappointed in it.
But that disappointment is still there, most obviously in the form of nostalgia. Itβs almost funny how thereβs no escaping nostalgia even though itβs a false, poisonous mental history where memories are realigned so that you canβt see anything but the silver lining. Itβs a big part of moving to another city or country, the sudden changes make you romanticize the past. βGhost of Joyβ is about this, yet itβs not that I was yearning for Istanbul after moving to Vancouver.
I was yearning for a vision of Istanbul that I had already lost when I was still living there, one that I grew up believing in but was taken away by the changing political tide and a slew of terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, attempted coups, and similar what have yous that tore the cityβs beating heart out. (Another bombing has just happened not over a week ago.) I remember that Bah and I were listening to a lot of Daughters around the time this song came about, probably because the way we felt about what happened was really close to the way βYou Wonβt Get What You Wantβ sounds.
But a vision is a vision, itβs not the real thing, and the real thing is complicated, itβs always been complicated. The title track, βNew Romeβ, was an attempt at dealing with this, closely examining your relationship with your roots to replace the nostalgia with retrospect.
Learning about your countryβs history outside the official storytelling is always somber and sobering, and thatβs what we wanted the song to reflect. There are many lyrical and instrumental references and Easter eggs in the song, the most prominent one being βDawnβ, Lorcaβs weird love letter to New York.
I guess I see βNew Romeβ as closing the first half of the album, not just because it sits right in the middle, also because thematically, the album takes a turn for the personal with βBetterlandβ.
Itβs hard to comment on all of this without sounding extremely navel-gazey, but growing up in Istanbul as a middle-class, city-dwelling, overeducated fucktard like I was, you were busy with nothing but your potential, what you could be. I suppose itβs not really different here in Canada, one big exception being the issue of access. Itβs fundamentally frustrating to grow up in a quasi-European part of a country that, like the rest of the world, is and has been for decades bombarded with the cultural products, codes, and values of North America, the most prevalent of which is the pursuit of self-realization. You are told to achieve this by consuming and/or creating, neither of which you have enough resources for as your limbs are bound with currency, language, and bureaucracy while your mind wanders. Although, I must say that I was surprised when I realized that there was something universal in this sentiment.
Writing βNew Romeβ, we felt like we were dealing with a whole new set of problems, mostly about whether or not there was any need for it. This must seem strange, but it did give us βKill the Houselightsβ.
Iβm sitting at a coffee shop right now in Vancouver, typing these words as a dozen other people around me are typing theirs, busy with their own personal projects and undertakings that mean the world to them but probably so little to the world. That look of frustration on their faces is familiar to me, because the only thing the people who are able to take their thousand-dollar laptops for a stroll and a cup of overpriced coffee at 11AM on a Thursday have in common are their precious personal projects. Validation is a need, and every effort for art and expression is vain and inferior if you overthink it. The solution is to work all the time so you donβt have time to dwell on all of this unwanted by-product. Genius, right?
I am tempted to say that, sonically, βBetterlandβ and βKill the Houselightsβ represent a different side of the band, but it wouldnβt be accurate. We love Midwest emo as much as we love metal, and we pull from everything that lets us give better musical form to our thoughts and ideas. Thatβs why we like using the post-hardcore genre tag, it can mean so many things that itβs ultimately meaningless. I think location is a better identifier of sound than genre tags, your surroundings give wider context to what you do and who you are. This was what I was thinking about during a stroll in a particularly affluent neighborhood in Vancouver, which just for a quick second made me ask myself if it was somehow wrong for me to be walking there. This is a silly thing to be worried about, but I did sincerely worry about it even if it was for a brief second. When I told Bah about it he went to his room, took his guitar, and produced the shrieking, dissonant chord that opens βChokeholdβ.
That silly thing is a product of adolescent anger and confusion, and it is with us, always, for this or that reason. Being a stranger and a newcomer elevates it, but Iβve come to understand that itβs a part of the human condition. We all feel time passing, hate having our years wasted, worry about our potential, what could have been.
We meant βHalf Your Lifeβ to be an affirmation of that sentiment. Fake joy is no joy, fake gratitude is ungrateful, if youβre angry be angry. Thereβs no going around feelings, there is no processing them without letting yourself feel them. Weβve lost friends to drugs, obstinate governments, the culture of work, radicalism. Some things have no silver linings.
A lot of artists use βhonestβ to describe their music. I donβt know if I can use that for βNew Romeβ. No matter how direct it sounds sometimes, it still is a carefully curated and processed expression of who we are and what we stand for. But itβs not escapist, and we are proud of that.