Towards the second half of 2015, the Brazilian indie psych rock quartet Boogarins quickly became a JOVM mainstay, and if you had been frequenting this site over that period dog time, I had written about a couple […]
Tag: Paris
New Video: The Breezy Tropicalia of Santiago de Cuba’s Septeto Santiaguero
With the release of 8 full-length albums, the 3 time Cubadisco Award-winning, 2 time Latin Grammy-nominated Santiago de Cuba-based septet Septeto Santiaguero have developed an internationally recognized profile for a sound that draws from the […]
If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past few months, you may recall that I’ve written about San Francisco, CA and Big Sur, CA-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer Jenny Gillespie. Gillespie can trace her musical career to he childhood — during drives to and from the Springfield, IL area, where she was born and raised, she spent quite a bit of time harmonizing in the backseat with her sister, who is a gifted and renowned pianist. When the San Francisco and Big Sur-based singer/songwriter was 13, she picked up her mother’s Martin guitar and began putting the poems she had been writing to her own original music. Gillespie’s life was further changed when a local record store clerk gave her album from three of the 90s most renowned singer/songwriters Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan and Shawn Colvin — all of whom quickly became major influences on Gillespie’s music and songwriting.
After stints living in Virginia, Paris and Texas, Gillespie relocated to Chicago, where she self-produced and then released her sophomore album, Light Year, a folk and alt-country album that received quite a bit of praise. And as a result the attention Light Year received, Gillespie met Darwin Smith, an Austin, TX-based multi-instrumentalist, with whom she wrote her third full-length effort, Kindred, a sparse, experimental, electronica-based effort recorded in an old house in Wilmette, IL with contributions from Steve Moore, who has worked with Tift Merritt and Laura Veirs and Dony Wynn, who has worked with the legendary Robert Plant.
Inspired by a volunteer trip to Kenya that led her to an African fingerpicking class at the Old Town School of Folk Music and studying for an MFA in Poetry at North Carolina’s Warren Wilson College, Gillespie found her sound and songwriting approach expanding and becoming more refined. By the fall of 2011, she traveled to NYC to record the EP Belita with Shazard Ismaily, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with Lou Reed, Bonnie Prince Billy, and St. Vincent. Interestingly, that effort possesses elements of pop, folk music, African and Asian rhythms and tones.
Featuring contributions from Emmett Kelly (Bonnie Prince Billy) on guitar and Joe Adamik (Califone, Iron and Wine) on drums, her last full-length effort Chamma was released to critical praise, including landing on Billboard Magazine‘s Top 25 Albums of 2014 List. Naturally, that has seen Gillespie’s profile grow nationally — and continuing on that buzz, the singer/songwriter is set to release Chamma‘s follow-up, Cure for Dreaming through Narooma Records at the end of the month. Recorded over the past couple of months and featuring contributions from Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann), drummer Jay Bellerose (Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand), guitarist Chris Bruce (Meshell Ndgeocello), guitarist Gerry Leonard (David Bowie), and pedal steel player Greg Leisz (Lucinda Williams, Bon Iver), the album reportedly possesses elements of folk, progressive jazz, and 60s and 70s AM pop.
The album’s first single “No Stone” paired Gillespie’s unhurried and husky vocals with a spacious and subtly jazz-like arrangement of keys, guitar, bass, gently buzzing electronics and hushed drumming in a song that felt as intimate as a lover whispering sweet nothings in your ear. And at the song’s core was a conversational lyricism that possessed a novelist’s attention to detail — both physical and psychological — as you can picture a woman who hides her face by the ocean, cherry blossoms in bloom, and someone peering through a keyhole to see a depressed woman struggling to just start her day. And as a result the song’s narrator feels like a fully-fleshed out person, desperately struggling to push forward.
The album’s second and latest single “Part Potawatomi” pairs Gillespie’s unhurried and ethereal vocals with a hummable melody, a deceptively simple arrangement of guitar, drums, bass and ambient electronics that sonically bears a resemblance to Junip — and their frontman, Jose Gonzalez‘s solo work. And much like much like the album’s first single “No Stone,” “Part Potawatomi” reveals a Gillespie’s remarkable attention to detail, as the song frankly discusses the slow and seemingly inevitable dissolution of a romantic relationship metaphorically described as a storm brewing over the shore. The song’s narrator seems to evoke the sensation of being trapped in a relationship that’s going nowhere out of familial and moral obligation — and as a result, the song possesses a subtle yet increasing feeling of frustration and regret, while being one of the more beautiful songs I’ve heard in the past 10 days.
As an unabashed child of the 80s, Depeche Mode holds as much of a place in my heart as New Order; after all, so much of their material has managed to be part of my life’s soundtrack. More than enough ink has been spilled throughout the act’s influential career, so delving into their biography is largely unnecessary. Interestingly, over the past 20 years, an in impressive and growing number of artists have covered, remixed and reworked Depeche Mode including Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones, A-ha, Monster Magnet, Scott Weiland, The Cure (yes, seriously, The Cure!), Tori Amos, Nada Surf, Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda, Breaking Benjamin, Royskopp, Placebo and more.
Comprised of Paris-born and London-based duo Axel Basquiat (composer, vocals, bass) and Vincent T. (production, sound engineering and keys), The Penelopes are an indie electro pop act, production and DJ duo who have developed a reputation for propulsive, Giorgio Moroder-like remixes of Lana Del Ray, Pet Shop Boys, We Have Band, Night Drive, The Ting Tings, Alt J and a growing list of others, and for their own original material — which critics internationally have compared to Daft Punk, M83 and Air, among others. The Parisian-born, London-based duo add their names to a growing list of artists, who have covered Depeche Mode with their rendition of “Never Let Me Down Again,” which turns the slow-burning and moody industrial/goth song into a shimmering and anthemic, club-banger with a sinuous bass line and propulsive drum programming with Basquiat’s breathy baritone. And although The Penelopes uptempo rendition is warmer and dance floor friendly, it retains the original’s sense of longing and desire.
Check out how The Penelopes cover compares to Depeche Mode’s original below.
Over the better part of the past year, Detroit, MI-based duo Gosh Pith have become JOVM mainstays while winning the attention of the blogosphere for a sound and songwriting approach that focusses on capturing a specific feeling or sensation, rather than capturing a concrete narrative. considering that the duo, comprised of Josh Smith (vocals, guitar and production) and Josh Freed (samples, synths and production) reportedly started the project after a drunken and psychedelics fueled late night walk through the streets of Paris in which they found themselves moved and marveled by the sounds of their voices echoing of narrow streets, the focus on capturing mood before anything else shouldn’t be surprising. However, interestingly enough, over the past year the duo have been experimenting with their sound and songwriting approach over that same period of time — with their sound gradually becoming warmer and guitar becoming much more prominent and obvious throughout.
The Detroit-based indie electro pop duo close out a big 2015 with a set at Rough Trade on December 17 and with the release of their latest single “Gold Chain,” which the duo have described as “. . . a ratchet love song about the constant conflict between the meaningful and the meaningless.” Sonically the song pairs swirling electronics, bleeps and bloops, boom bap beats, skittering drum programming, strummed bluesy guitar chords with Freed’s earnest falsetto signing lyrics about longing for a particular lover, comparing them to a gold chain, which clearly has a financial value but doesn’t necessarily have a deep emotional meaning; in some way it’s a bizarre pick up line that’s both ridiculous and kind of endearing. Interestingly, the song may be the most R&B-leaning song the duo have released to date.
Producer, DJ and electronic music artist Paris-born and Italian-based Idriss D has spent more than a decade at the forefront of Italian electronic dance music with the release of a string of commercially and critically successful EPs and singles — and as one of the best known DJs and producers as he’s played in some of his country’s most renowned clubs and music venues including Echoes, Cocorico and Red Zone.
After a chance meeting with Berlin-based Fabrizio Maurizi in 2006, the pair founded Memento Records, a forward thinking electronic music label that has released work from up-and-coming and cult-status producers and artists such as Luciano, Paco Osuna, Argy, Tom Clark, Okain and others. Idriss D’s long-awaited full-length debut Amalgamation is slated for a December 18 release is inspired from the Italian-based DJ and producer’s desire to bring together his life experiences over the last couple of years as he’s become something of an authoritative voice in Italy’s club scene.
Amalgamation‘s first single and album opening track “Transition” is an incredibly nuanced song consisting of skittering drum programming, undulating synths, electronic clicks, bloops and beeps and big thumping bass, and sonically it possesses the same hazy and dream-like feel of Octo Octa‘s Between Two Selves — in particular, “Please Don’t Leave.” And much like Octo Octa’s impressive 2013 full-length, the song is an atmospheric and carefully constructed and yet propulsive and dance-floor ready.
21 year-old Paris-based, French-Brazilian singer/songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Yndi Ferreira is the creative mastermind behind indie electro pop project Dream Koala, a project that Ferriera started back in 2012. Interestingly, Ferreira developed a reputation of his production style as he quickly became a go-to remixer, remixing the work of Angel Haze, The 1975, BANKS and others — and as an artist, his debut single “We Can’t Be Friends” caught the attention of renowned acts including Fabolous, Doja Cat and the aforementioned BANKS.
Building on an increasing buzz around him, Ferreira released the critically applauded Odyssey EP and Earth. Home. Destroyed. EP which were informed by a variety of Ferreira’s influences including Flying Lotus, My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, contemporary R&B which gave the material a spectral, shoegazer-like, introspective feel, along the lines of Beacon‘s For Now and The Ways We Separate while thematically exploring Afrofuturism and sci-fi.
Slated for a December 4 release, Ferreira’s soon-to-be released EP Exodus will reportedly continue thematically where the critically acclaimed Earth. Home. Destroyed. left off while cementing his reputation for crafting moody, spectral electro pop that seamlessly meshes elements of contemporary R&B, bass-heavy electronica and soft rock. “Dimension Sleeper,” Exodus‘ first single (and EP opener, by the way) pairs layers of slowly cascading synths, dub-inspired tweeter and woofer rocker bass fed through gentle washes of reverb and skittering drum programming with Ferreira’s plaintive and ethereal vocals in a song that evokes both the sensation of weightlessness and of wisps of smoke curling and rising heavenward before dissipating. And although possessing a retro-futuristic sound that would clearly sound at home in the early 80s, at the core of the song is a delicate and ancient ache that’s haunting and unsettling.
While playing this song I thought of the song’s narrator in a dying spaceship traveling through the cosmos, and the entire time the narrator is haunted by the lingering and inescapable ghost of a departed lover.
New Video: Christine and the Queens’ Incredibly Slick Video for “Tilted”
Born in Nantes, France singer/songwriter Heloise Letissier studied theater and art, before relocating to Paris, where she completed her studies. While in London, Letissier became deeply inspired by the drag queen scene originating from that […]
Opinion: Some Thoughts on the Terrorist Attacks in Paris
Last night, I was eating an early dinner and chatting with my mother about politics and some of the events of the day. I was getting myself together before heading out to a recording studio […]
Born and reared in the Springfield, IL area and currently splitting her time between San Francisco, CA and Big Sur, CA singer/songwriter. guitarist and producer Jenny Gillespie can trace her musical career to her childhood — during drives to and from town, a young Gillespie spent quite a bit of time harmonizing in the backseat with her sister, who is a gifted pianist. When Gillespie was 13, she picked up her mother’s Martin guitar and began putting the poems she had started writing to music. A local record clerk changed the young singer/songwriter’s life by giving her albums from three of the 90s’ most renowned singer/songwriters — Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan and Shawn Colvin.
After stints living in Virginia, Paris and Texas, Gillespie relocated to Chicago, where she self-produced and then released the folk and alt-country influenced sophomore effort Light Year to a fair amount of critical praise across the blogosphere. As a result of Light Year‘s exposure, Gillespie met Darwin Smith, an Austin, TX-based multi-instrumentalist, with whom she wrote her third full-length effort, Kindred, a sparse, experimental, electronica-based effort recorded in an old house in Wilmette, IL with contributions from Steve Moore, who has worked with Tift Merritt and Laura Veirs and Dony Wynn, who has worked with Robert Plant.
Inspired by a volunteer trip to Kenya that led her to an African fingerpicking class at the Old Town School of Folk Music and studying for an MFA in Poetry at North Carolina’s Warren Wilson College, Gillespie found her sound and songwriting approach expanding and becoming more refined. And by the fall of 2011, she traveled to NYC to record the EP Belita with Shazard Ismaily, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with Lou Reed, Bonnie Prince Billy, and St. Vincent. Interestingly, that effort possesses elements of pop, folk music, African and Asian rhythms and tones.
Featuring contributions from Emmett Kelly (Bonnie Prince Billy) on guitar and Joe Adamik (Califone, Iron and Wine) on drums, her last full-length effort Chamma was released to critical praise, including landing on Billboard Magazine‘s Top 25 Albums of 2014 List. Naturally, that has seen Gillespie’s profile grow nationally — and continuing on that buzz, the singer/songwriter is set to release Chamma‘s follow-up, Cure for Dreaming early next year through Narooma Records. Recorded over the past couple of months and featuring contributions from Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann), drummer Jay Bellerose (Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand), guitarist Chris Bruce (Meshell Ndgeocello), guitarist Gerry Leonard (David Bowie), and pedal steel player Greg Leisz (Lucinda Williams, Bon Iver), the album reportedly possesses elements of folk, progressive jazz, and 60s and 70s AM pop.
“No Stone” Cure for Dreaming‘s first single pairs Gillespie’s husky and unhurried vocals with a spacious yet warm and subtly jazz-like arrangement of keys, guitar, bass, gently buzzing electronics and hushed drumming in a song that feels as intimate as a lover whispering sweet nothings in your ear. And at its core, is conversational lyricism that possesses a novelist’s attention to detail, as you can picture the woman who hides her face by the ocean, the cherry blossom trees in bloom, someone peering through a keyhole to see a depressed woman struggling to just starting her day — and a novelist’s attention to psychological detail. The song’s narrator feels like a fully-fleshed out person, desperately struggling to push on. Interestingly, each time I’ve played the song I’ve been reminded of how Gillespie sounds so much like Joni Mitchell — it’s incredibly uncanny.
New Video: Life on the Road with Brazil’s Boogarins
If you’ve been frequenting this site for the past few weeks or so, you may remember that I’ve written about the internationally acclaimed Brazilian indie psych rock quartet, Boogarins. The Brazilian quartet can trace their origins to […]
Comprised of Brennan Ross (vocals, guitar, and bass), Michael Thieven (drums), Carl Johnson (guitar, vocals), Michael Dawson (lyrics, keys), Amanda Scandrett (keys) and Paul Guthrell (saxophone), the Regina, Saskatchewan-based sextet Library Voices are a collective of childhood friends, who grew up going to basement shows and obsessed with sci-fi.
Several months of relentless and exhausting touring to support Summer of Lust came to a head in what the band describes as “one of the saddest hostels in Amsterdam.” The next day, during a tour stop in Paris, hundred of rats swarmed their tour van. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the tour quickly went south — and when the band returned to Regina, they all decided that they needed some time apart.
After a two year hiatus, the members of the Canadian sextet reconvened and began working on the material that would comprise their forthcoming effort Lovish, which is slated for a November 6 release through Nevado Music. And much like the band’s previous efforts, the album was recorded in an old funeral home and was mixed by Dave Plowman and Alex Bonenfant, who have worked with METZ, Crystal Castles, and July Talk.
Adding to a period of incredibly difficult luck, during the recording sessions for Lovish, the band’s frontman Carl Johnson was jumped, beaten unconscious by a random assailant. Johnson suffered a severe concussion, a hematoma (blood pooling) in his brain, a loss of smell, and a very difficult and long road to recovery. For a few months, it remained uncertain if Johnson would be able to continue to write and perform music and it left the band and the album in a state of limbo, in which they all feared their work may never see the light of day. Eventually Johsnon was able to contribute seven songs to the album while bandmate Brennan Ross contributed and took up vocal duties on the remaining four.
The band’s latest single “Zzyx” is actually inspired by an incredible, seemingly improbable yet true story. As legend has it, in 1944 a radio evangelist and self-proclaimed doctor started squatting in the middle of the Mojave Desert. He recruited a number of Skid Row bums to build a 60 room mineral spa, complete with a church, a radio station and an airstrip. He named the compound “Zzyx,” the last word in the English dictionary, referring to it as the “last word in health,” and he dubbed the airstrip, the Zyport.
Incredibly, the radio evangelist remained on the property selling phony medicinal remedies and potions and scamming gullible senior citizens for the better part of over 25 years — until the federal government evicted him from the land. And as the band notes in press notes, Lovish‘s latest single was written as an ode to a strange place, where people were desperate to believe in something and desperate to live forever.
Although in press notes, it says that the band’s sound has been described by some media outlets as having elements of surf rock to my ears that seems incredibly off, as their sound seems to sound as though it draws a bit more from glam rock, proto-punk, power pop and U2 as the song possesses an emotional immediacy and urgency around anthemic hooks, power chords, enormous blasts of horns, and earnest vocals. I’ve played this song a number of times, and every time I can picture a sweaty room of young people yelling along to the chorus, and feeling as though the song speaks deeply and passionately to them about their lives — and with a forceful honesty.
He chose the name Zzyzx with the intent that it would be the last word in the English language, referring to it as “the last word in health”. When you arrive to the location today it looks more like the DHARMA Initiative basecamp in the television show Lost. We all want to live forever. We are all dying to believe in something.
The internationally acclaimed Brazilian indie psych rock quartet, Boogarins can trace their origins to when its founding duo, Fernando “Dino” Almeida and Benke Ferraz started playing music together as teenagers in their hometown, the central Brazilian city of Goiânia. The music that Almedia and Ferraz began to write and then eventually record was a unique vision of psych pop that drew from their country’s incredibly rich and diverse musical history — but with a decidedly modern viewpoint. Their 2013 full-length debut, written and recorded as a duo, As Plantas Que Curam was a decidedly lo-fi home studio effort, pieced together in isolation before the duo had played a live gig. By the time, their debut album was released, Almedia and Ferraz had recruited a rhythm section, and the completed lineup had started developing a profile both in their hometown and nationally, as they started booking and playing regular gigs in Sao Paulo and several of Brazil’s largest cities. Without much support from a label or from a major PR firm, As Plantas Que Curam was a critical and commercial success in Brazil, as the album received praise from Rolling Stone Brazil, who had dubbed the band “Best New Artist” in 2013, and the album was nominated for several awards on GloboTV’s annual music award shows. Arguably, a great deal of the success and attention that Boogarins has seen in their homeland comes from the fact that unlike the majority of contemporary Brazilian acts that primarily sing lyrics in English, like their British, Australian and American counterparts, Boogarins material is written and sung completely in Brazilian Portuguese.
Now, if there’s one thing the blogosphere has gotten absolutely right, its the fact that as a general rule it has given attention and praise to a number of fantastic internationally based acts that many American listeners wouldn’t have been aware of before, unless they were particularly adventurous. And over the last two years or so, Boogarins have started to receive increasing international attention as the band as toured across the globe, playing at some of the world’s most renowned and largest festivals, including Austin Psych Fest, Burgerama, Primavera Sound Festival and headlining shows in clubs in London, Paris, Barcelona and New York. Naturally, with that kind of exposure, the band started to receive praise from a number of internationally recognized outlets such as Pitchfork and The New York Times, who compared the Brazilian band’s sound to the likes of early Jefferson Airplane.
During their Spring 2014 European tour, the members of Boogarins spent two weeks in Jorge Explosion’s Estudio Circo Perrotti in Gijón, Spain, where they started tracking for material, which would wind up comprising their sophomore effort, Manual, which is slated for an October 30 release. Actually, the album’s full (and official title) is Manual,ou guia livre de dissolução dos sonhos, which translates into English as Manual, or Free Guide to the Dissolution of Dreams, and the material on the album is specifically meant to be viewed as a diary or sort of dream journal. The band eventually returned to Brazil and in between concert dates across South America, they finished the album in Ferraz’s home studio.
Manual‘s material is reportedly not only more personal than their debut, it’s also more socially conscious as it draws from the sociopolitical and class issues affecting their homeland before, during and after the 2014 World Cup as entire neighborhoods were pushed aside and destroyed for massive commercial developments that helped wealthy global corporations make even more money, instead of uplifting those who desperately needed uplift and were promised it from the World Cup. (Certainly, as a native New Yorker, the stories of increasingly gentrification changing the face, character and population of the city would seem remarkably familiar.)
Just a few weeks ago, I had written about album single “Avalanche,” a slow-burning yet breezy and percussive song comprised of shimmering guitar chords played through reverb and delay pedals, swirling feedback and a sinuous bass line paired with plaintive and ethereal vocals. And in some way, the song sonically speaking sounded as though it drew from Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here-era Pink Floyd and Tropicalia but thematically drawing from Rage Against the Machine; in other words, dreamy and trippy yet grounded in the real world — and done in a way that’s powerfully accessible. The album’s latest single “6000 Dias” is a slow-burning kaleidoscopic song that’s propelled and held together by a tight rhythm section, as the song is composed of about three distinct segments — one which includes a gorgeously, twisting and turning guitar solo that’s reminiscent of Robby Krieger‘s incredible, guitar solo in “Light My Fire” before ending in a gentle fade out, which evokes the sensation of slowly waking from a pleasant reverie.
Founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Tinariwen can trace their origins back to the mid and late 1970s when Alhabib, who had been inspired to learn the guitar from an old Western film, in which a cowboy played a guitar, joined other Tuareg rebels living in refugee camps in Libya and Algeria, who were exploring the radical chaabi protest music of Moroccan groups like Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala; Algerian pop rai; and western artists like Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Carlos Santana, Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix, Boney M, and Bob Marley.
While in Tamanrasset, Algeria, Ag Alhabib started a band with Alhassane Ag Touhami and brothers Inteyeden Ag Ablil and Liya Ag Ablil, and they began playing the traditional sounds of the Taureg people at weddings and parties across Algeria and Libya. Interestingly, when they started, the band had no official name but people began calling them Kel Tinariwen, which in the Tamashek language translates roughly as “The People of the Deserts” or “The Desert Boys.”
In 1980, Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi released a decree inviting all young Tuareg men, who were living illegally in Libya to receive full military training, as part of his dream of forming a Saharan regiment, comprised of the best young Tuareg fighters to further his territorial ambitions in Chad, Niger, and elsewhere across Northern Africa. Al Alhabib and his bandmates answered the call and received military training. They answered a similar call in 1985, by leaders of the Libyan Tuareg movement and wound up meeting fellow musicians Keddou Ag Ossade, Mohammed Ag Itlale (aka “Japonais”), Sweiloum Ag Alhousseyni, Abouhadid Ag Alhousseyni, and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni — all who had sang and played guitar. The musicians joined together in a collective — now known across the world as Tinariwen — in order to write songs about the issues facing their people, built a makeshift stood and vowed to record music for free for anyone who supplied a blank cassette tape. And naturally, as a result their homemade cassette tape series were highly sought after, and were traded throughout Saharan Africa. (It’s also incredibly punk — perhaps more punk, than anything most Western artists could ever come up with.)
In 1989. the members of the collective had left Libya and relocated to Ag Alhabib’s birthplace of Tessalit, Mali; however, by the next year Mail’s Tuareg population revolted against the Malian government, with some members of the collective participating as rebel fighters. After a peace agreement known as the Tamanrasset Accords were reached in early 1991, the members of Tinariwen left the military and devoted themselves to music full-time — and by 1992, some of the members of the collective were to Abidjan, Ivory Coast to record a cassette at JBZ Studios, and they occasionally played gigs for far-flung Tuareg communities throughout Saharan Africa, which helped the band gain word-of-mouth popularity among their people.
Tinariwen started to receive international attention after they had began collaborating with the renowned French world music ensemble Lo’Jo — with the result being the highly acclaimed 2001 Festival au Desert in Essakane, Mali. Greater attention came to the band when the play their first UK performance at that country’s largest, free African festival, Africa Oye. And the year was topped by the release of their full-length debut, The Radio Tisdas Sessions, their first recording to be released outside of their native Northern Africa. Coincidentally, this has gone on as the collective has gone through some lineup changes, incorporating a younger generation of Tuareg musicians, musicians who didn’t live during some of the military conflicts of the older generation, including bassist Eyadou Ag Leche, percussionist Said Ag Ayad, guitarist Elaga Ag Hamid, guitarist Abdallah Ag Lamida, and vocalists Wonou Walet Sidati and the Walet Oumar sisters.
As the collective has started to see greater international attention, they’ve toured regularly across the European Union, North America, Japan and Australia, often playing at some of the world’s biggest and highly renowend music festivals including Glastonbury, Coachella, Roskilde, Les Vieilles Charrues, WOMAD, FMM Sines and Printemps de Bourges. And they’ve won over an incredible list of celebrity fans and champions including Carlos Santana, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, U2‘s Bono and The Edge, Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke, Coldplay‘s Chris Martin, Henry Rollins, Brian Eno, and TV on the Radio, among others. And it shouldn’t be surprising because of their hauntingly gorgeous music rooted in the poetry and traditions of the tough, rebellious people of Northern Africa — and in some way, the material captures the vast expanse of the desert as their sound seems to arch heavenward . . .
At the end of last year, the members of Tinariwen played a show in Paris and invited the legendary grand dame of Tamashek culture, Lalla Badi, one of Tuareg culture’s beloved master of the tinde, which is both a percussive instrument covered by taut goatskin, played by women and a poetic repertoire sung at ceremonies and special and intimate occasions. Not only is she considered the paradigm of Tuareg femininity, she has also long been an outspoken advocate for Tuareg culture and causes, as well as being a mentor to the members of Tinariwen in their early incarnation. The end result was a live recording of their Paris show, Live in Paris slated for a November 20 release through Anti- Records.
The first single off the live album “Tinde Final Tinariwen” is a hauntingly gorgeous track that begins with droning guitar chords, propulsive percussion and a collection of male vocals crying and chanting before Badi’s regal vocals joining in on a composition that marries ancient traditions with contemporary sound. Indeed, there’s a forcefulness to the composition but it arches heavenward with lilting, trance inducing beauty that’s awe-inspiring.