Tabla Rock

Album review

If the cover and title of Shawn Lee's Incredible Tabla Band's Tabla Rock seem more than a little similar to the classic 1972 LP Bongo Rock by the Incredible Bongo Band, they should; Lee remade the album track for track (and included a couple of numbers from IBB's second platter, too). Though seemingly suspect in conception, Lee's reasons for it are sound: he discovered that despite the almost ubiquitous sample of the monster drum break in the tune "Apache," no one had ever actually covered the song in the hip-hop or electronica music eras. Lee then decided not only to cut the track, but the entire album. He knew he couldn't contribute much by employing samples alone, so he took a different path: he made a deeply funky, grooving rock record with Indian classical music and Bollywood woven into its fabric with the aid of percussionist Prithpal Rajput (aka Cyber of the Asian Dub Foundation) and keyboardist Mick Talbot, formerly of the Style Council. The end result of Lee's project is a loopy, multivalently layered, percussive, and keyboard-drenched interpretation of Bongo Rock that actually works. Check the alternating mix of enormous tom-toms, congas, timbales, and tablas before the fuzzy guitar kicks in opener "Let There Be Drums." (He sequenced the recording differently.) The waves of drums and keyboards kick the textural palette up exponentially. On "Last Bongo in Belgium," sitars interact with the guitar lines and a Farfisa, and add even more wah-wah and fuzz to the bassline. "Apache" commences with a tabla break to intro the infamous drum break! A sitar plays the melody interspersed with an enormous horn section, creating an Indian Spaghetti Western feel. When the huge B-3 enters, it almost derails with its insistence, but although a shocker as it washes through, the track's integrity remains. One can argue that by adding two tracks from the second LP -- "Sing Sing Sing" and "Pipeline" (which is a sitar-kissed exotica version of the original raging surf tune) -- he should have left off "Inna Gadda Da Vida" -- nothing can make that track sound attractive ever again, even as kitsch. That small quibble aside, Tabla Rock is a hip, exotic, project that adds to, rather than detracts from, Viner's Bongo Rock.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo