Tinariwen - 'Imidiwan: Companions' (Independiente) Released 27/06/09

It’s true Tinariwen have just the one trick up their sleeve. But what a trick it is. A taut, slinky groove that takes Ali Farka Toure-patented unhurried desert blues, gets it well and truly hammered on John Lee Hooker’s bar room boogie, before returning to Sahara to infuse the proceedings with several generations’ worth of poetic longing and proud history of rebellion, after which the majestic results are unfurled at the loping pace of a camel caravan trekking through the desert at dusk. No wonder this loose troupe of Tuareg tribesmen and -women have been one of the most notable, sustained success stories of African music in recent years: theirs is a sound that’s somehow simultaneously reassuringly familiar - the essence of blues, before flashy guitar-milking soured its reputation - and totally, refreshingly alien.

Having completed the band’s decades-long journey from the impenetrable obscurity of domestic cassette releases to wowing the crowds at Glastonbury with 2007’s excellent ‘Aman Iman’, it’s reassuring to see the band continue to show zero interest in pandering to their newfound Western audience. ‘Imidiwan’ is business as usual: no superstar cameo slots, no sudden shifts from Tamashek to English as language of choice, and absolutely no watering down of Tinariwen’s minimalistic, tough, razor-sharp sound. If anything, the band’s fourth international release’s even more devoted to maintaining the authentic stance of these musicians who at some point during the band’s lengthy, sketchily recorded existence swapped traditional acoustic instruments for battered Gibsons and generator-powered amps. The pace’s slower, the mood’s more consistently downbeat, and, unlike the album’s predecessors, there are no clear highlights to tower over the bulk of the tracks, although the spellbinding drift of ‘Chegret’, the skeletal funk of ‘Tenhert’ and the riff maelstrom of ‘Tahult In’ are all superlative-exhausting stuff. 

This, then, is the sound of Tinariwen returning to the source: an elemental, slow-burning cavalcade of rolling riffs, quicksilver guitar licks and chanted communal vocals, with the basest of percussion and bass lines to anchor the hypnotic proceedings. Tinariwen might always sound roughly the same, thoroughly resistant to change, the tempo only very rarely rising beyond the kind of energy-sparing stroll that’s probably advisable in the harsh desert conditions these tracks were conjured and recorded in. Yet it’s immeasurably intense and powerful also, infused with harsh beauty and crackling with a barely contained tension, providing the most compelling argument for imposing strict restrictions on musical variation since the best of twelve bar-frequenting 50’s Chicago blues.