Artists
Sinkane
We Belong, is the eighth studio album from Sinkane, a band led by multi-instrumentalist Ahmed Gallab. And like much of Sinkane’s previous releases, it resists genre. It’s pop. It’s funk. It’s electronic. It blends the gritty punk newness of a 70s and 80s New York with the steady, foundational soul of the rhythms of his native Sudan. Though We Belong comes deep into the catalog of a long career, it also resists stagnation. It moves and travels—through words and eras, through emotion and healing. Gallab calls this album his “love letter to Black music,” and each track pulses with the energy of different eras and forms: the gospel-soaked “Everything Is Everything,” the dreamy, Quiet Storm-influenced Afro-beats of “Rise Above,” the 70s-funk of “We Belong” and its Sly Stone influence, the Stevie Wonder-edged “Another Day”—they tell a story about Black music and Black people.The album itself also reveals Gallab’s desire to create a work that not only reflected a community, but was made by one, too. We Belong assembles this community, makes it visible, to anyone willing to see, to hear, to feel. Gallab and Amanda Khiri, co-lyricist on most of the songs, passed notes across the digital divide. Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Ismael Reed, scraps of poetry. The pair turned these late-night ideas into fully realized compositions. Casey Benjamin, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with jazz pianist Robert Glasper, left his touch on several tracks. Jazz trumpeter Kenyatta Beasley soared across three songs. Soul singer Bilal lent his voice. Rising artists like vocalists Ifedayo Gatling, of the Harlem Gospel Travelers, Tru Osbourne, Hollie Cook, and STOUT, joined this community as well.
What had long been a solo endeavor by Gallab, suddenly became a collaborative experience. “Having all these people at my disposal [meant] I could actually be a producer,” he says. “I could zoom out a little bit and see what serves the song best? How can I make this better? Having a community around me really just allowed this to turn into something bigger than I could have ever imagined.”
The result is an album that showcases freedom, in all its forms. Freedom to create, to move, to love, to live. The we of the title is all of us. All of us who have lost and found community. All of us who have reached into the past to find our future. And ultimately, it is the sound of an artist finding his way back to himself by stretching beyond himself. “In making this album, I realized very quickly that I got a lot of freedom in not making it about myself,” Gallab says. “I realized I'm more than just me, there's all of us, all of us together. It's much more about community and much more about connecting with other people. But maybe, that's how I've kind of come to find myself.”
Social Links
Delgado y Los Conejos de Amor
On Tin Corazón wandering bass, keening pedal steel, martial percussion forms a foundation over which Delgado’s dusky vocals glide like swallows greeting twilight. It is flecked with post- punk grit, drenched in reverb and mesquite smoke. Dubbed “Dark Desert Swoon”, Tin Corazón is expansive, haunting, and undeniably engaging. The tale of Delgado begins at age twenty, our native New Mexican newly arrived in Chicago with $20 in his pocket, a Fender Mustang, and couches to surf. He cut his teeth playing solo acoustic shows in the best of the worst bars, from sleezy dives to the back room of a filthy taqueria in Wicker Park. After building a hard-won career playing in shoegaze and punk bands around the Chicago scene and touring regionally, it was soon once again time to head the call of the wandering spirit. Delgado recalls, “I gave myself until I was 33 years old to try and build a career as a musician in Chicago. After that, I figured that it was time to cut my losses.”
Delgado headed east, attending design school in Detroit. After a decade in the Motor City, h once again pulled stakes. “I was going through a painful break-up and had to lay my cat to rest on the same day I moved into my own apartment” he tells. “I moved to California a few months later, and it just went from bad to worse. The stress of that situation just wasn’t allowing me to process all the changes and heartache. That’s when the music just started flowing out of me. And from that moment forward, I just kept on writing to exorcise the demons.”
What resulted was Tin Corazón, Delgado’s first release after ten years of silence. The songs on Tin Corazón were born from heartache, regret, anger, salvation, and everything in between. The more he wrote, the more the songs touched on modern social issues. “I think the isolation of these times forces us to stop and take deeper notice of our immediate surroundings, and that includes trying to understand our place in the world” Delgado explains. Tracked remotely across four states during the pandemic with his band, Los Conejos De Amor (The Rabbits of Love), Tin Corazón was arranged, produced and mixed by Jason Davis at Off The Cuff Sound. The two had first come together when Davis had tracked a demo for Delgado’s
band Toro, Toro, Toro!!!. They clicked and knew they would work together again. In late 2019 they reconnected, and Delgado started sending Davis demos.
“As we’ve grown more comfortable working together, I spend less time sweating the fine details
early on and just send over a rough idea” tells Delgado. “In this way, the instrumentation hasbecome a bit more stream of consciousness. Instead of trying to control the wild horse, we just jump on and let the ride take us wherever we end up.” In production, they focused more on the vibe of a take rather than chasing perfection. “It’s the first time I let go of the reins and stopped being overbearing about direction. I just kind of pointed us in a direction and let it happen.” Combining Delgado’s surf guitar tones and the pervasive atmospherics drawn from his shoegaze days, Tin Corazón breathes deeply of his New Mexican roots. The traditional Mariachi 1950s Rock n’ Roll and the country-western music that soundtracked his youth echo throughout the record. In essence, “These songs are a return to a life of music I thought I lost. And I don’t take that lightly.”
So, we have Tin Corazón, an immersive work of art that draws you in like a great work of prose - and satisfies such the same. Give yourself over to Delgado, for it is a broad and deeply human journey through which he guides us.
Social Links
default
