Biography can be overstated when evaluating an artist's work, but Ahmed Gallab's story is key to understanding his music. The Sudanese son of two college professors, he moved to the United States with his family at the age of five to escape the country's fomenting political violence of the late 1980s. The family moved around a bit, and Gallab eventually settled in Columbus, Ohio, when he was 18, where he fell in with the city's hardcore punk music community. He later found work as a session musician of some demand, drumming and serving as a multi-instrumentalist for Yeasayer, Caribou, Of Montreal, Born Ruffians, and Eleanor Friedberger. Eventually, as these things often go, he made his way to Brooklyn, where Sinkane started taking shape as his primary creative outlet.
Mars is Gallab's second full-length as Sinkane, and it sounds like the work of a nomadic professors' kid with equally strong ties to a DIY scene as well as his east African roots, whose creativity flourished on the road with indie vets and in the self-styled cosmopolitan home of 21st-century indie music. Mars is both refined and easygoing, if not a bit aloof at times. It works in multiple musical registers simultaneously and smartly-- the syncopated rhythms and breezy guitar figures of Sudanese pop, krautrock, early-70s funk, free jazz, Fader-friendly global indie-- while maintaining a clear authorial voice (largely coming from Gallab's playing multiple instruments on each song).
There's a loose concept at play on the record: Mars is Gallab's metaphor for a musical space in which anyone can exist, regardless of background. Though the temptation to refer to the rich tradition of Afro-futurism arises when a guy born in Sudan references interstellar reaches, the connection to Sun Ra, Parliament, or André 3000 is tentative at best. The record's politics are as abstract as the cover photo, and the album's mood thermostat doesn't move much from the "chill" position. There aren't a whole lot of lyrical specifics, but an abundance of references to the red planet seems less meant to signify escape (as in the Reverend A.W. Nix's pioneering "White Flyer to Heaven" sermon), or a sign of plain weirdness (as in Lil' Wayne's use): For Gallab, it's more along the lines of a summertime rooftop party, where your affable host greets you without rising from his deck chair.
With few exceptions, Gallab makes sure Mars' invitees are clearly identified. The album opens with the squawking funk of "Runnin'", on which his thin falsetto and encouraging words directly channel Blaxploitation-era Curtis Mayfield. "Love Sick" is about as blatant a reappropriation of "Spoon"'s vampiric funk riff as I've ever heard, and "Jeeper Creeper" vamps for five minutes around the core idea of Yeasayer's "2080" (it helps that the band's bassist plays on the song). "Making Time", which rides a new age synth pad that could have been drawn from All Hour Cymbals into the pocket of a deep Afro-funk groove, is the album's most successful synthesis. He plays all instruments on the song, save for a "Dirty Diana"-style guitar solo, courtesy of Twin Shadow's George Lewis, Jr. Yet instead of flaunting it, Gallab buries it in the mix, allowing it to serve as more of a textural element than a spotlit celebrity showcase. This is perhaps the clearest example of Gallabs gifts: using his friends smartly, playing down virtuosity, lest it detract from the overall vibe.
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