Sinkane
Mars
There's a place for us scattered and uprooted peoples,'' says Sinkane mainman Ahmed Gallab, ''a place we can all know as home, with elements of all our homes.'' That place, as it turns out, is Mars. On one level, Mars is dense with deep, polyrhythmic grooves that hail directly to Africa; on another level, it's a 21st century party record that acknowledges the global music village in which we all now live. The music of Mars is kinetic, sexy and catchy. But at its core, it's one man's way of working through a very American story. While elements of Mars come from all over the world, the album is very firmly rooted in a specific place: ''This,'' Gallab says, ''is very much a New York album.'' He met virtually everyone who appears on Mars within his first year of living in the Big Apple. But more to the point, Mars is the sound of someone figuring out how to exist in New York, as a stranger in a strange land - a feeling anyone can relate to anywhere. That's why the album is called Mars. People use Mars to describe some place alien, weird, foreign, a place they don't understand. ''It's where I feel like I am right now,'' says Gallab, ''a desolate, tropical place filled with hope, ambition and love.'' A formidable player on guitar, bass, keys and drums, Gallab is a virtual one-man band, playing at least four instruments on every track on Mars. But he enlists some top-flight musicians, like Twin Shadow, Yeasayer bassist Ira Wolf Tuton, former Shai Hulud guitarist Oliver Chapoy, members of Afrobeat band Nomo, and saxophonist/flautist stutzmcgee.
| 2LP | City Slang: SLANG50036 | out of stock |
