Name: Oh Voyage
Members: Aktaş Erdoğan, Erol Leenhouts
Nationality: Turkish, Netherlands-based
Current release: Oh Voyage's upcoming, self-titled debut album is out November 7th 2025 via AudioMaze.
Current event: Oh Voyage will perform at Rich Mix Thursday 20th November 2025 as part of London Jazz Festival. For more information and tickets, click here.
Recommendations for Istanbul: We would recommend taking the ferry that connects Asia and Europe.

If you enjoyed this Oh Voyage interview and would like to know more about the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, bandcamp, and Soundcloud.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

The inspiration to perform and create music for us comes from the different styles of music we listen to. Combined with our curiosity to create music that uses both modern techniques and technologies together with our knowledge of musical instruments from our Turkish roots.

In addition to this we also get sudden urges to create when we read certain literature, whether it be books or poetry and from places we visit.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas or what some have called a 'visualization' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Writing music is always an adventure, sometimes it starts with an inspiration and sometimes it starts with an idea. This is then intuitively followed by the outcome that we are chasing in our creations.

Recently we have been more involved with the planning aspect of things. We always come to each other with ideas and develop them into a further version when we sit together, usually with a time limit.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

We always start out with demos of songs. Both of us use an audio program called Ableton Live to produce music, so sketching out ideas is quite instant. We usually make demos of short mp3s that indicate things such as the mood, instruments, tempo and general vibe of the idea.

Usually we will have an idea of what we want it to sound like. We spend time together to do research of what we want these ideas to sound like and take it further from there.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play? For your latest release, what did you start with?

For our debut album we met in the South of Italy, in the Puglia region where Erol’s parents live. They have a little wooden house by the countryside.

This place was ideal to put the final ideas into place because we were quite disconnected from the outside world. Places like these help to reset our mind from our daily life and really focus deeply into the process of creation.

If there were conceptual considerations, what were they?

The concept of our debut album came from a moment where we coined the term ‘new nomads’ for ourselves. Inspirations for this concept come from Turkish workers that migrated to Europe in the 60s and 70s. Also the artwork has hints towards this concept.

This is our first full album as a duo and we are still searching our sound, creating our world of music blending electronic sounds with traditional Anatolian music.

Tell me a bit about the way the new material developed and gradually took its final form, please.

The ideas for the songs started when we decided to close ourselves in an empty office-space in Rotterdam. Our co-manager was moving offices and had a space for us.

After that we performed our ideas live and looked at people's reactions and also how it feels to perform them. Sometimes new ideas came on the spot on stage and some ideas were sent to people we collaborated with, mostly other instrumentalists or vocalists.

To bring all of these ideas together we met again in Puglia and worked on them intensely for a week. During this week we really switched up the ideas and sometimes even had to let go of some ideas that we were attached to.

After all ideas were finalised we teamed up with our sound engineer Kaan Yazıcı who also helped us produce the album and re-record certain elements such as vocals in a more professional way in his studio. He helped us to approach the music with a fresh set of ears and also did the mixing with us.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

It is a combination of putting some parameters for ourselves and also leaving some freedom.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

The state of play during creation is somewhat very similar to that of a kid when he or she is playing a game or learning. The moment when we allow ourselves to be in a state where we enjoy playing and creating music, things happen through us.

We are still learning at this point and trying to figure pieces of a puzzle together. There is an element of spirituality to it.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practice?

We always let pieces lie and come back to them with fresh ears and perhaps different states of mind.

We call this process ‘to leave in fallow’, a process in which we leave the field untouched for it to regain its creative juices.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

This is what we are looking for in the long run.

But since this is our first album, we dedicated its sound to a journey in which we are searching for our sound and style. So we let it be dynamic and flow through certain genres as well.

Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for your current project and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?

We have been touring a lot since we started Oh Voyage. The artwork for the debut album comes from the idea of our name and the idea of being away from home, in a different city all the time. This makes us think of our music as if it’s reflecting the Turkish diaspora living throughout Europe.

The term for this diaspora is called ‘gurbet’ or ‘gurbetci’, literally meaning being in a foreign land. We wanted the cover art to have a reference to this culture that we are also a part of at this point.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

We had a moment where we took a breath.

But now we are already working on the next releases planned.