Tombouctou

If you Like your desert blues raw and unmediated and think Tinariwen are over-produced, then AL Bilali Soudan is for you. Taking their name from an ancient name for the city of Timbuktu, some may remember their self-titled first album eight years ago and the sound here is just as wild and untamed. Led by Abellow Yattara, a virtuoso on the three-stringed fretless tehardent (the Tamashek word for ngoni), the band consists of a quartet of inter-related fathers and sons, cousins and uncles. Yattara is a veteran who played on Ali Farka Touré's first cassette recordings 40 years ago and he brings his long griot experience to bear on a set of mostly traditional songs, grittily proclaimed and chanted in Tamashek, Songhai and French over nothing more than a backing of two amplified tehardents and calabash.

The songs range from hypnotic dance tunes (‘Yermakoi’ and ‘Tabaitra’) to loping Touareg grooves (‘Hoummaisa’) and lightning-fingered work-outs infused with an almost punk-like energy (‘Djaqba’). The production values are invisible, which is not a criticism for such intrusion would interfere with the authenticity of the experience. However, one might have appreciated a little more variation in the somewhat relentless monophonic onslaught.