Sinkane Announces New Album He’s Gone, Shares “So It Goes”

Ahmed Gallab, the Sudanese-American multi-instrumentalist who records as Sinkane, has announced a new album titled He’s Gone. According to Stereogum, the record is due February 26 through City Slang.

A record shaped by loss

The album is a more somber project than 2024’s celebratory We Belong. Gallab wrote it after the death of his father, and it deals with memory, family and loss. Although it features guest contributions from Yo-Yo Ma, Mdou Moctar, Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Annie & The Caldwells, Gallab produced, engineered and mixed the whole album himself.

“Making the record gave me permission to grieve and, eventually, became a kind of catharsis,” he said. “I thought I was making an album about losing my father. Instead, I started finding him and, ultimately, myself.”

About “So It Goes”

The lead single, “So It Goes,” features Tuareg desert blues guitarist Mdou Moctar. Its title comes from the fatalistic refrain that follows each death in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The song also draws on the novel’s central idea that all moments in time, past, present and future, exist at once.

“After my father died, I found that strangely comforting,” Gallab said. “Maybe being gone doesn’t mean every version of you is gone. I wanted the song to feel like an East African psychedelic fever dream. I asked Mdou Moctar to play the guitar solo, and he took it somewhere wonderfully unexpected. There’s something beautiful about a song about death feeling so full of life.”

Tracklist

The album has ten tracks:

1. “He’s Gone” (feat. Yo-Yo Ma & Preservation Hall Jazz Band); 2. “So It Goes” (feat. Mdou Moctar); 3. “Let Me Know”; 4. “Hold Me”; 5. “River”; 6. “Sunrise”; 7. “Take Your Time”; 8. “Good Grief”; 9. “What Now”; 10. “After, Forever” (feat. Annie & The Caldwells).

Release show

To celebrate the release, Sinkane will play a show at Public Records in Brooklyn on March 6. Pre-orders for He’s Gone are available now.

Source: stereogum.com

Image: Wil540 art / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)