Album / Artist: Amadjar / Tinariwen

Label: ANTI-

Reviewed: 9/26/2019

DJ Stace

General Comments / Release Notes

These are songs that transport you to places of expanse and sand and heat and age. Meditative, trance-inducing and vast. Featuring accompaniment of the likes of Warren Ellis (Dirty Three, Bad Seeds) and Cass McCombs. With recordings continuing after a song is done, conveying the informal bantering of the band, this album transports you to a place and a moment. At moments playful and informal, at others reverent and ecstatic.

Wikipedia:

Tinariwen is a group of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali. The band was formed in 1979 in Tamanrasset, Algeria, but returned to Mali after a cease-fire in the 1990s. The group first started to gain a following outside the Sahara region in 2001 with the release of The Radio Tisdas Sessions, and with performances at Festival au Désert in Mali and the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Their popularity rose internationally with the release of the critically acclaimed Aman Iman in 2007. NPR calls the group music’s true rebels, AllMusic deems the group’s music a grassroots voice of rebellion, and Slate calls the group rock ‘n’ roll rebels whose rebellion, for once, wasn’t just metaphorical.

Release Notes:

Rodolphe Burger guitar on Iklam Dglour Warren Ellis violin, loops on Mhadjar Yassouf Idjan, Iklam Dglour, Wartilla, Tenere Maloulat, Zawal Cass McCombs guitar on Itous Ohar, vocals and acoustic guitar on Kel Tinawen Noura Mint Seymali lead vocals and ardîn on Amalouna, background vocals and ardîn on Takount, ardîn on Zawal Micah Neslon charango, mandolin on Taqkal Tarha Stephen O’Malley guitar on Itous Ohar, Wartilla, Amalouna Jeiche Ould Chighaly guitar « jaguar » on Zawal

Recorded on the road in Western Sahara, and Mauritania on October and November 2018. Additional recording in Tamanrasset, Algeria in December 2018 at Abogi studio, Paris, December, January and February 2019, at Studio Delta.

FCCs: None

RIYL: Guitar virtuosity, World Music, Nusrat Fati Ali Khan, The Passion Recordings, Dirty Three

Play: All. Especially 9,1,10,2,7,11,12,13

Tracks:
1. *** Tenere Maloulat (feat. Warren Ellis) (03:42) - Vast, desertous and textural, with Ellis' sonic fingerprints recognizeable.
2. *** Zawal (feat. Warren Ellis, Noura Mint Seymali, Jeiche Ould Chighaly) (04:04) - Great off beat rhythm. Ellis' fiddling is a great countervoice to guitars. Cool fuzzed electric guitar accompaniment.
3. Amalouna (feat. Noura Mint Seymali, Stephen O’Malley) (04:01)
4. Taqkal Tarha (feat. Micah Nelson) (03:59) - Lighter and happier?
5. Anina (03:43)
6. Madjam Mahilkamen (03:47) - Great example of the chorus singing. Nice interplay between the guitar and rhythm.
7. ** Takount (feat. Noura Mint Seymali) (03:11) - Great vocals on this one.
8. Iklam Dglour (feat. Warren Ellis, Rodolphe Burger) (04:35)
9. **** Kel Tinawen (feat. Cass McCombs) 03:57 - This one has a particularly infectious groove. Great trilling at moments, in the background.
10. *** Itous Ohar (feat. Cass McCombs) 04:19 - Lighter guitar work, at first, with a bit of western flair. Guitars growl.
11. Mhadjar Yassouf Idjan (feat. Warren Ellis) (04:22) - This one is light and uplifting. I picture Warren Ellis dancing around the sand in his pointy Beatle boots, like Old Scratch.
12. *** Wartilla (feat. Warren Ellis, Stephen O’Malley) (05:36) - Ellis' wall of fiddle stays back but is omnipresent. Nice ominousness to this one. Fades to conversation and banter at 4:13, but is still cool.
13. *** Lalla (04:56) - Killer guitar, almost claw-hammer style. Great handclap rhythm fades into the sand at the end.