A former session musician for the likes of Caribou and Yeasayer, ‘Mars‘ – frontman Ahmed Gallab‘s second album with Sinkane – was something of a slow burning revelation when released at the beginning of 2013.
Stringing together inspirations as disparate as blaxploitation soundtracks, krautrock, The Steve Miller Band and vintage Roxy Music, the collage effect was as hip as it was engaging, with its follow up ‘Mean Love‘ adding a layer of (probably needed) pop sensibility, one which helped achieve the band a much deserved higher profile.
If ‘Mean Love’ won them friends in higher places, this new four track EP ‘Mean Dub‘ is however less of a nagging reminder of its excellence so much as a trip right off the reservation.
Delivered by the modish LA based husband and wife duo Peaking Lights, the fruits of their labours is effectively a set of extended jams, their leftfield MO for instance turning the smart 8-bit grooves of ‘How We Be‘ into a rumbling, nine minute odyssey that transports the listener to a different, far more intense country than before.
The story is a similar one throughout, each respective production run through a disorientating series of treatments that shift them from mainstream to underground. Here, Gallab’s falsetto is increasingly isolated amongst instruments twisted, sustained and plain locked in until every ounce of them is wrung out like a cloth; if the source material was a cocktail of styles and influences, Lights seem intent on boiling them down to base metals. Opener ‘Hold Tight‘ glides along courtesy of a gut thumping bass and occasional flourishes of echo into the abyss, whilst their take on ‘Yacha‘ channels the rebel rock of The Wailers into a seemingly endless sea of tightly chopping guitars.
Part of ‘Mean Love’s appeal – which the producers have described as ‘soulful psychedelia – was its lack of pretense and copious warmth. Whilst the duo’s ambition is undeniable, these are both qualities that either discarded or left in the background leave the results harder to connect with, especially on the lilting, stoned take on ‘Galley Boys‘, which sounds like it’s being phoned back from an extra-Universal acid trip. Maybe this is the point.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to try and figure out who the product was actually made for. In the case of Sinkane fans, they’ll need to be pretty hardcore to pay this much more than casual interest. For Gallab, it proves that elementally his music can withstand being so thoroughly deconstructed without losing its core identity.
Those who’ve just come across the name are best advised however to start with either ‘Mars’ or ‘Mean Love’, both far more accessible points into a world which is much more enticing than some of rework here would suggest.
