The Gnawa Caravan: Salt

London-based gimbri master and Gnawa evangelist Simo Lagnawi is becoming a prolific and reliable recording artist, releasing Gnawa-themed albums with colourful artwork on an annual basis. The Gnawa Caravan: Salt picks up where The Gnawa Berber left off. Lagnawi plays both traditional, devotional Gnawa music – led by the gimbri (long-necked lute), qaraqabs (castanets) and other percussion – and music that weaves in other styles. He broadens his palette further on Caravan, without ever moving the spirit of his music-making away from its source. The styles imported into his music are mostly African. Grinding electric guitar on four tracks gives the overall sound a strong desert blues aesthetic and Louis Bingham, one of the two featured guitarists, delivers an extended solo on ‘Sahara Blues’. Lagnawi's producer and musical partner Griselda Sanderson gives a bluesy, Abdullah Ibrahim-style piano performance on ‘Bambraka’ and plays the ritti (West African two-stringed fiddle) on the fragrant ‘Shemaa’, while Mosi Condé's kora brings a Malian lilt to ‘Salmani’.

The stylistic equilibrium is just right, as is the production, which balances instruments and voices beautifully while keeping a sense of rawness. The result is a slicker sound that is exciting and never a compromise. There are moments in which waves of Lagnawi's reverb-heavy vocals rain down on a trance-like base of gimbri and percussion, and time stands still.