Ozan Tekin is a Turkish-born, Cologne-based composer, producer and performer. He releases his solo works under his own name or under the alias Seyrek Rifat. Besides his solo works, Tekin also composes music and makes sound design for theatre, performance art, film and TV.
Born in Adana, Tekin started playing piano at the age of 5. This early introduction to music not only paved his way to be a composer and producer later on but also cultivated his attentiveness to the phenomenon of Sound in general throughout his life.
As a performer and a producer, Tekin worked with numerous artists and bands of Istanbul’s independent music scene including Can Güngör, Nilipek, Biz, Ars Longa, Post Dial and Yora between. He also composed music and made sound design for plays and performances of theatre companies like fringe ensemble, Why Not? Kollektiv, Studio 4 Istanbul, İkincikat and DasDas. These productions have been staged in various international festivals in Turkey and Germany.
In 2016, Tekin created a visual and auditory performance project titled “Mornings for Sale / Satılık Sabahlar“. In the first performance, he performed an improvised ambient set with his “studio” on stage in KargART, İstanbul.
In 2017, he released an EP titled “Ayrık“ under his singer-songwriter alias Seyrek Rifat. Tekin also composed music and made sound design for Burak Çevik’s first feature-length film “Tuzdan Kaide” (2018). The film premiered in Berlinale Forum 2018.
In 2019, Tekin’s debut album “Pillars of Salt”, which consists of his ambient and experimental compositions, was released by Cologne based label NOORDEN. The album is formed of dark melodies blended with layers of distorted, nerve-racking ambient drones. It creates a space of freedom and artistic expression in which Tekin turns his innermost towards the outside while acting as a producer, keyboard player and engineer.
In 2020, Tekin started to work on his second album “Anarya”, echoing a vernacular saying from his hometown Adana to make “an attempt for migrating backwards”. Tekin draws his projections over neo-classical, jazz and ambient music fading through his piano in “Anarya”, which is an inverted journey from Germany to Adana with a long layover in Istanbul. The first chapter Anarya I EP, which focuses on Tekin’s last migration stop Germany, was released in May 2021. Anarya II EP, which attempts to revisit Tekin’s emotional and episodic memories in Istanbul, was released in March 2022. The album “Anarya”, in which Tekin’s inverted journey comes to an end in his hometown Adana, was released in May 2022. The album supported by many DJs worldwide and singles like “965”, “Life Blooms in Concrete”, “Irresistible Call of a Swift”, “Ode to Being Idle” were played on radios like BBC, KEXP, NTS, Worldwide FM, Inter FM.
Today Tekin continues to perform his solo projects and works on theatre, film and TV productions as a composer and sound designer while he is assisting Academy-Award nominated German film composer Volker Bertelmann a.k.a Hauschka.