Ibrahim's music is ever changing but always beautiful
by Joe Tarr
Ibrahim can't make up their minds. They've met for an interview at Cup-a-Joe Old City, but have decided a bar-like atmosphere (not to mention a couple of beers) is required for the discussion. Unfortunately, no one can come up with a suitable suggestion for a bar.
Different members have vetoed Patrick Sullivans and Manhattans for one reason or another. Finally, the Pilot Light is agreed on, but the bar turns out to be closed tonight.
So, the group saunters across the street to Sullivans, resigned to their fate. The boys are used to this. "This is indicative of the song writing process," says drummer Jason Stark, as he breaks into a self-deprecatory tone: "'I don't know—what do you want to do?' 'I don't know—what do you want to do?'"
Making decisions is never easy for this band. Despite their lackadaisical demeanor (or perhaps, because of it), Ibrahim has become one of the best bands in Knoxville, with a live show that is both intuitive and dynamic.
The group was formed out of the ashes of Dent—a band that included Stark and guitarists Chad Speerly and Jesse Wagner—which broke up when a key member moved away. The three continued playing together and writing. Eventually, they drafted Patrick Wolf to play bass. "Patrick had never been in a band before and we figured we could make a bass player out of him," Stark says.
Picking a name was typically agonizing for them. After going through several suggestions, they were finally inspired by a friend, whose name, Barhoumy, means "little Ibrahim." The band chose the name shortly before Sept. 11. After the terrorist attack they worried some people might give them grief over the Semitic name, but so far they've had few problems.
Ibrahim's music might be heard as part of the "post rock" movement, eschewing the age-old verse-chorus-verse formula for instrumental pieces that move through a number of movements of varying tempos. But the group doesn't see themselves as fitting into that genre.
"None of us are big jazz musicians; it seems most of those bands put together rock songs like jazz tunes," Stark says. "Most of our songs are 4/4 or 6/8—pretty standard rock structures. We're usually too drunk to be math rock. I can barely count to four sometimes."
However basic each individual segment might be, the effect of hearing them is not quite the same as that of catchy 3-1/2 minute pop song. There are melodies, but they shift and turn several times, so it's almost as though the songs have no center. Tension is built up and then released, or sometimes cut off abruptly before that release.
The band and its songwriting process are very much democratic affairs. "Sometimes we'll be fiddling around and someone will say, 'Keep playing that,'" Wolf says. Everybody has input and songs might go through months of rewrites before a version is settled on.
"Basically, we write a song. Nobody likes it, but we play it out for a while until somebody says, 'I don't like that song,'" says Stark. Then rewritings ensue. They've been working on one song for about four months. "There's never any parameters," Stark adds. "That's why the songs end up being eight or nine minutes long."
The process might sound drawn out, but it suggests the ephemeral nature of their sound. Heard live, the music lulls you into a trance and then turns on you in giddy abandon. Stark is one of the best drummers in town and Wagner and Speerly adeptly trade off with their guitars.
"Me and Chad's guitars flip flop so much, there's not a dominant part," Wagner says. "It's weird how we play off of each other. It's like we're a vocal duet on guitars."
There aren't yet any vocals on their music, mainly because they just don't seem to fit. "The way we write songs, it would almost be arbitrary to put a voice to it," Wolf says.
But that could change. For a Halloween benefit at the Pilot Light, the group performed as Joy Division, with Speerly doing an impressive job on vocals.
Last May, Ibrahim recorded an eight-song CD with the help of Jason Boardman, co-owner of the Pilot Light. ("Without the Pilot Light, we wouldn't have a place to play," says Stark. "Or a CD," adds Speerly.)
True to their deliberate nature, the CD has yet to be released. There were problems with the mixing, and it had to be done over. Now the group is focusing on artwork and hope the CD will be out in the next couple of months, after which they hope to do some small tours (they're lining up two gigs in New York City for January).
The downside of having the CD unreleased for so long is that Ibrahim keeps tinkering with the songs, forever changing their minds about how they should sound. "Some of the songs on the CD we don't even play the same way anymore," Wagner says.
"It's a 'temporal document,'" Stark says. "Put that down."
November 14, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 46
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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