Amachal

On their second album, Toumast create a new form of Touareg guitar music, substantially evolved from the trademark sound we’ve come to know and love from the likes of Tinariwen and Tamikrest. ‘We're not a cliche’, protests the band’s leader Moussa Ag Keyna. ‘I don’t go round the desert on a camel anymore. I've been in France since 19946’. And, while the album’s starting point is the familiar Touareg loping desert rhythms and snaking guitar lines, the template tropes and curlicues of the Tinariwen tradition are integrated into an international rock sound which reflects the world in which Moussa and his partner – the female guitarist and singer Aminatou Goumar – now live. Released in France a year ago but only now getting wider distribution, the album opens with accordion, flute and what sound like bagpipes invading the deserts of Niger. There’s a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘You Got Me Floatin. The American rapper Beat Assailant turns up on one track and the smooth reggae-lite tones of singer Jehro are heard on another. There are Hammond organs a-go-go and ‘Akal Daalin’ sounds like a jam that might have escaped from an Afro-Celts album. You have to applaud Toumast’s intent and one must always be careful about imposing entirely Western notions of ‘authenticity’ on indigenous musicians. But to these ears, Toumast still sound best on tracks such as ‘Awala Ounhoun’, where it is the timeless pull of the desert rather than the hybrid din of the Parisian banlieues which dominates.