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Features Disc of the day
Tinariwen
Imidiwan : Companions
(Independiente, 2009)
Dusty, ghostly blues from the heart of the Sahara.
Nomads: they're tough guys to pin down, and Tuareg psych-pedlars Tinariwen are less a band, more a moveable feast. Their rotating cast and mercurial approach can make for startling explosions of spontaneous music-making but can also bemuse. Recent gig-goers noting the absence of Tinariwen lodestar Ibrahim Ag Alhabib - he of the Hendrixian freak-rug and Strat chops - have debated the point at which Tinariwen might become a franchise, like those '90s touring versions of Wu-Tang Clan featuring U-God and some blokes he met on the plane over.
Identity issues have also haunted the last two Tinariwen albums. 2004's Amassakoul emphasised their Western blues-rock influences (Oualahila Ar Tesninam was a ringer for '69 Fleetwood Mac) but was too tidy for some. '07's Aman Iman continued down a more urban path. Ibrahim has expressed misgivings about both, and Imidiwan is billed as the group's attempt to recapture the sound of the desert around their spiritual hearth, Tessalit, deep in the Malian interior.
This is good news for fans of the hazy ecstasies of 2001's Radio Tisdas Sessions, and from the off Imidwan recalls Tinariwen's debut in the way its multiplicity of guitars slip in and out of focus, gambolling around an implied beat, the grooves dark and fuggy, peaking with distaff harmonies and spooked ululations. A renewed connection of ancient with modern and a rebalancing of desert and urban influences are evident in Tamodjerazt Assis - a gritty contribution by prodigal nomad-poet "Japonais" - and a revival of live favourite Chegret, intoned by Ibrahim in a voice veined like an old acacia trunk. Throughout, the drone is the transporting element, most marked on the tripped-out Kel Tamashek, a rumbling tribute to the people who speak Tamashek: ie. the Tuareg.
Like its historic African-American cousin, Tinariwen's blues comes from a place of struggle, their yearning voices full of the sorrows that on-off guerrilla war have brought to their corner of the world. But there's joy and abandon here, too (Lulla is a kind of desert romp through Brubeck's Take 5), and succour for admirers of classic stoner grooves from Neil Young's On The Beach to King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown.
This is cosmopolitan music plugged into the global mainline, nothing to alarm those overly daunted by the unknown. And yet - and here's the trick - it's also strange, dusty, wild and wonderful. Imidwan : Companions ends on a ghostly note, a secret track that's just a pulsing shimmer of feedback, the product of Ibrahim's guitar, propped against its battery-powered Peavy amp in a clearing outside Tessalit. If it was indeed his ambition to get the sound of the Sahara on record, he has succeeded, unquestionably. But Imidwan is nothing so specific, or - like the people who made it - geographically constrained.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 15/01/2010
Further Listening
Tinariwen - Radio Tisdas Sessions (Wayward, 2001)
Neil Young - On The Beach (Reprise, 1975)
Terakaft - Akh Issudar (IRL, 2008)
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Comments
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This is a great record. I saw these guys in concert last year, and they blew me away. They're coming around again, and I already have tickets. If you like electric african guitar, these guys are the real thing.
Posted by wrecksracer at 4:40 PM GMT 15/01/2010 Report Abuse
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This is a great record. I saw these guys in concert last year, and they blew me away. They're coming around again, and I already have tickets. If you like electric african guitar, these guys are the real thing.
Posted by wrecksracer at 4:45 PM GMT 15/01/2010 Report Abuse
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