 |
Omar Gongora
(September 2005 Issue)
Stand-Up Guy The key to watching
Kinky's drummer/percussionist Omar Gongora live
is to never blink. The
fiery drummer, who fuels the band's blend of Latin rock, electronica,
and disco, never stops moving
as he swings from a DW drumkit that he
plays standing up to congas, timbales, a Roland 808, and a TD-10.
"Yeah, I have a
lot of work to do," he says with a laugh. "That's why
I'm so skinny. I get a lot of exercise."
Gongora has
been
playing standing up for about five years now, mainly because it's the
only way he can get around his expansive
setup. "In the beginning I
played drums and percussion," he explains. "But I couldn't easily
switch to the congas
because I was sitting at a normal set of drums.
Then I came up with the idea of standing up to play everything, and now
I feel
very comfortable."
Gongora and his Kinky compatriots recorded their second offering,
Atlas
(Nettwerk), in a jungle about two hours outside of Cancun, Mexico. The
setting lent Omar's percussion
playing a different feel. "It was an
amazing place to record," he says. "I really felt more 'animal' when
playing the
congas, timbales, and djembe there. I started to make a
whole percussion section by sequencing drumkit parts and then
adding
other parts with cowbells, congas, and djembe. It was really
interesting. I did have to back off on some of the parts,
though,
because they were filling up too much space in the music."
David John Farinella
 Go to Artist Index
|
|
|
|
