Beyond the Trance

Iness Mezel's third album kicks off with the kind of Justin Adams guitar riff you'd find him using as Robert Plant's right-hand axe man. But into this maelstrom of testosterone-driven tribal thunder comes Mezel's confident and full-bodied vocal, which immediately asserts just who, or what, is the focus of this album. And on track after track – from the edgy blues funk of ‘Semer’ to the subtly apocalyptic epic, ‘Strange Blues’ – her voice rests her case.

This French/Italian/Algerian/Kabyle singer-songwriter's subject matter is also interestingly idiosyncratic. The aforementioned ‘Strange Blues’ (which brings to mind both Public Image Ltd at their best and the Mauritanian singer Malouma) is a tribute to the bravery of political writers and journalists, ‘Respect’ sings praises to ‘the invisible world, to the free souls and spirits’, and the gentle acoustic ‘Tahkeit’, with its 1960s West Coast hippy ambience, is appropriately enough about a flower (and, presumably, its power). Adams is all over this record as both producer and instrumentalist (playing guitar, banjo, gimbri and other instruments), so if you're a fan of his work with Juldeh Camara you should find much to enjoy here too. For my money, this beefed-up, edgier take on the North African Berber-infused sound is a marked improvement on Mezel's previous, politer efforts. It's been a while (her second album was released in 2003) but it was worth the wait to hear her go in this more direct and viscerally powerful direction.