THE GO-TO GURU Sinkane
Jun 16, 2009
Ahmed Gallab is a multitasking experimentalist extraordinaire. Oh, and he's also your new favorite indie rock drummer.
BY JOEL OLIPHINT
If Ahmed Gallab is aware that he's becoming one of indie rock's go-to drummers, he's certainly not letting it go to his head. "I'm probably the luckiest person in the world," he says. "I wake up every day and just kinda pinch myself."
Things weren't so great about a year ago, though. Gallab had just set out on tour with his Columbus, Ohio, band, Sinkane, when his van went kaput, sending him home on the second day dejected and frustrated. But on his way to a job interview, Gallab got a call that changed everything.
"Before I went to the interview I checked my e-mail, and I had a mass e-mail from [Dan Snaith of Caribou] saying that their drummer broke his wrist and they needed a replacement," he says. "So before I left I e-mailed him my phone number, and he called me five minutes later as I was driving. He said, ‘We need you here tonight,' so I just turned the car around and packed my bags."
Gallab learned the songs in less than 24 hours and played the show the next night flawlessly. "It was super human," Snaith says. And it was a dream come true for Gallab, who had poured his heart out to Snaith after handing him a CD at a 2007 concert. Snaith says he was "blown away to hear Ahmed's CD, which had big slabs of free jazz, Krautrock, African music, ambient music, etcetera."
On the Caribou tour, things began snowballing. In Athens, Georgia, Of Montreal approached Gallab after a show and asked him to join the band on the spot. Despite not owning one of their records, he agreed and embarked on the band's fall tour - fully embracing the cartoonish costumes - after Caribou finished up. (Of Montreal is touring as a five-piece now.)
These days, you can catch Gallab playing with Ontario's Born Ruffians. Right as his stint with Of Montreal came to a close, Born Ruffians needed a drummer, and having toured the UK with Caribou last year, the band enlisted Gallab to jump on their tour with Franz Ferdinand in April and May.
And while Gallab plays the role of replacement-drummer extraordinaire for the indie rock aristocracy, Sinkane is still alive and well, releasing the four-song Color Voice on Emergency Umbrella Records last spring and following it up with a longer, more ambitious self-titled record this past May.
Sinkane is essentially a solo project, as Gallab (now based in New York) writes all the songs and plays just about every instrument on the records. But his singular, psychedelic vision incorporates everything from jazz to shoegaze, classic rock to experimentalists like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. His African heritage peeks through often, as well. At six, Gallab fled to the U.S. from Sudan with his family after a military coup overthrew the democratic government there; his journalist father had spoken out against the government several times.
Where the mostly instrumental Color Voice used electronic loops as a base - sounding a bit like Caribou's weird little brother, in a good way - Sinkane is more organic, with more singing and liberal amounts of swirly, wah-soaked guitar. It's also the first release where Gallab's love of classic rock appears, especially on the 10-minute epic "Blown" and the amusingly-titled album closer "Totally Hot But Pretty Awesome," which is unmistakably indebted to Pink Floyd. Really, the only constants on Sinkane's records are drones and big, bombastic drums.
Suffice it to say, you won't hear anything else like it this year, even if there's another Sinkane release. Gallab is already talking about his next album, which he hopes to finish by the end of the summer. Until then, though, don't be surprised if you see ol' Ahmed up there on stage with one of your favorite bands.
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