What The Papers Say
About Aman Iman | About Amassakoul and Radio Tisdas Sessions
UK
"This is SENSATIONAL! The album of 2007 and we haven't even finished 2006 yet. There are plenty of bands who know how to rock, but very few who know how to roll. Tinariwen are the masters of roll'n'roll."
Andy Kershaw, BBC Radio.
"...a mesmeric evocation of the mood of yearning inculcated through years of exile, all nourished by the vast emptiness of the desert...an album that deserves to hoist Tinariwen onto the international stage occupied by high-profile world music acts such as the Buena Vista Social Club and Ali Farka Toure."
Andy Gill, The Independent, 5/5 Stars.
"Aman Iman is that rarity in world music: an album that can be instantly enjoyed by a Western rock audience but which doesn't feel compromised."
John Mulvey, The Times Knowledge, CD OF THE WEEK.
"...one of the most extraordinary and unlikely musical success stories of the last few years. With its spacey Fender Stratocaster sounds and elemental rock feel. Tinariwen's music has always had the potential to appeal well beyond the confines of the world music audience."
Mark Hudson, The Daily Telegraph, POP CD OF THE WEEK.
"This extraordinary band are clearly pushing for more than cult world-music status. They fully merit it."
4 Stars. Barney Hoskyns, Uncut Magazine.
"Aman Iman is filled with exotic, mesmerising sounds, a glorious celebration of the collective's homeland. And with his huge mop of hair and incredible vocal range, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, makes for one of the most dashing frontmen on the world stage."
The Sun, 5/5
"What's special about Tinariwen's latest desert blues is the way that their laidback, rhythmic but gloriously tight and rousing songs are now mixed with spoken passages or more thoughtful reflective pieces..."
Robin Denselow, The Guardian , 4/5 Stars.
"Tinariwen's third album sounds thrillingly unlike anything else on the planet. It's their dense, pulsating guitars, with strong echoes of the primal electic blues of John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf, that lift them out of the world music's usual ghetto."
Peter Kane, Q Magazine, 3/5 stars.
"...it's not only a deeply satisfying return for the existing Tinariwen fans, it's also a great jumping-off point for the prespective world music fan who has no idea where to start."
Eddy Lawrence, Time Out, 4/6 Stars.
"Prowling guitars and pulsating rhythms, this should break them through to a whole new audience."
Music Week.
"This third album is by some distance the best showcase of their desert blues, thanks, in part, to the sonic clarity of producer Justin Adams."
Neil Spencer, The Observer.
About Amassakoul and Radio Tisdas Sessions
UK
"..the best ROCK album of the year"
Stewart Lee - The Sunday Times (UK)
"..the best ROCK group in the world?"
The Observer Music Magazine (UK)
"...an intoxicating, hypnotic sound..."
5/ 5 Stars. Andy Gill - The Independent (UK)
"...I still maintain that they are not only the best world music but the best rock and roll band in the world, full stop."
David Honnigman - Financial Times (UK)
"I've never been a gambling man, but if you could find me a bookie who would offer odds on which album will win the fRoots Critics' Album of the Year for 2004, I'd lay a tenner on Amassakoul, the second album from Tinariwen."
Charlie Gillett - BBC London (UK)
"Their first album The Radio Tisdas Sessions, set the benchmark for Saharan blues. This is a benchmark for African music."
David Hutcheon - Mojo (UK)
"Tuareg turns out to be a derogative term, meaning "the godforsaken." I knew none of this when I first heard Amassakoul. I knew only that this was the most exciting guitar band I'd heard in a long time. It's not necessary to know about them to enjoy the music."
3 / 3 Stars. 'Outstanding'. POP CD OF THE WEEK, Mark Edwards - The Sunday Times (UK)
"An extraordinary story, extraordinary music... Think of them as the new Riders On The Storm and be fearful."
Mark Cooper - The Word (UK)
"...what they purvey relates to the Mississippi blues... and emerges in purely Malian form, with graceful phrases endlessly repeated in that circular motion so peculiar to Central Africa"
4 / 5 stars, Michael Church - Independent on Sunday
"Nurtured in exile, raised in conflict, and driven underground, where they achieved legendary status, Tinariwen are the kind of band that generations of western rebel rockers could only dream of being."
Tim Cummings - The Guardian (UK)
"Tinariwen are an outstanding guitar band from the Sahara."
4 / 5 Stars. Robin Denselow - The Guardian (UK)
"An entrancing surprise."
Neil Spencer - The Observer (UK)
"An amazing album in the true sense of the word."
Music Week (UK)
"...the world's most exotic band... whether you know Tinariwen's story or not, a sense of other-worldliness and harsh experience is ground into every note of their music."
Mark Hudson - The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"These Touaregs play guitars with wild, bluesy abandon, sounding something like the bastard Saharan child of Bo Diddley and Husker Du."
Nigel Tassell - HMV Choice (UK)
"As the hypnotic guitar licks of the opener 'Amassakoul N'Tenere' kick in, you're into one of the deepest African albums in years... a soulful and spiritual fusion of the ancient and modern"
Andy Thompson - Straight No Chaser (UK)
"If they were not nomads from Mali, Tinariwen might be called a garage band. They share with the White Stripes, the voguish virtues of a stripped-down guitar sound, lent extra weight by the plaintive quality of Saharan electric blues."
Rick Glanvill - Q (UK)
"...after only a couple of plays, Amassakoul sounds even better than its predecessor and may very well end up as one of the albums of the year."
Jamie Rention - fRoots (UK)
"Like a jewel in the sand, Tinairwen captures the imagination and restores your faith in the raw, hypnotic power of music."
5/5 Stars. Paul Morrison - Wanderlust (UK)
"The guitars, along with simple but perfect clapping, clacking percussion, rough male voices and ululating female ones, and the fierce, hypnotic quality of the traditional melodies combine into one of the most devastatingly mean and lowdown sounds to have come out of Africa..."
4/5 Stars. Phil Sweeney - Songlines (UK)
"With the Festival in the Desert grabbing so much attention, lets not forget that Tinariwen, Mali's original Touareg musicians, got the ball rolling..."
Phil Meadley - Songlines (UK)
"The trick for all 'world' music is to take you there - and listening to this album from the group dubbed the Rolling Stones of the Sahara, you feel as if you could be out in the desert at night, huddled in a tent, talking rebellion as curls of smoke from an oily flame thicken the atmosphere."
Caspar Llewellyn-Smith - Observer Music Monthly (UK)
(Re: Concert at Cargo, 03/04) "Awesome! So bloody effortless and simple."
Andy Kershaw - BBC Radio (UK)
(Re: WOMAD 2004) "Their performances were timeless: edgy desert blues with multiple guitar lines interlocking as if slipping in and out of a long, elliptical conversation, tiny delays reverberating back and forth so that the music seemed to contain its own echo, utterly adult and utterly serious."
David Honigman - Financial Times (UK)
(Re: Concert at Cargo, 03/04) "World music? Don't talk pish. There is no gap between what they do and what The Who, The Mary Chain or the Quo did. They rock."
David Hutcheon - Time Out (UK)
(Re: Concert at Cargo, 03/04) "Tinariwen are hot - Sahara hot..."
Simon Broughton - The Evening Standard (UK)
(Re: WOMAD 2004) "Tinariwen are the ultimate guitar band, and they don't have much else apart from guitars...But what a great sound they make."
John L Walters - The Guardian (UK)
"What the group play is desert blues, the wandering, smoky lines of the music summoning up a nomadic sense of a land without boundaries. The figures of the guitarists are immobile, and so inscrutable are their veiled faces that almost the only stage movement is their hands flickering across the fretboards. It's an ambience that highlights the extraordinary dreamlike quality of their music."
Tim Cummings - The Guardian (UK)
"With the Festival in the Desert grabbing so much attention, lets not forget that Tinariwen, Mali's original Touareg musicians, got the ball rolling..."
Phil Meadley - Songlines (UK)
(Re: Paris. Nov 04) Just about the best blues experience this far north of the Sahara."
David Hutcheon - Mojo (UK)
"This is genuine rebel music and it sounds it"
Jamie Rention - fRoots (UK)
"The group, which formed in a refugee camp in Lybia, makes a raw and earthy sound with their gutsy rebel songs."
The Times (UK)
"Tinariwen are an imposing sight, a line of veiled figures with Fender Stratocasters... The interweaving, reverb-laden guitar lines echo spookily in the cold night air, adhering into a sultry, bluesdy riffing - the men's voices world weary, yet imbued with a strange fervour."
The Telegraph Magazine (UK)
"...the audience were treated to an entrancing hour of gently pulsing desert blues."
BBC Online (UK)
EIRE
"It is raw and wild, employing the call-and-response mode, driven along by a string of shimmering guitar figures. Certainly an acquired taste, but fascinating nonetheless."
Joe Breen - The Irish Times. (Eire)
FRANCE
"One realises that this record is capable of reinventing the very semantic meaning of the word 'blues', remodelling the geopolitics of rock and restoring nobility to the concept of 'charm'"
Francis Dordor - Les Inrockuptibles
"An extraordinary mix of tamashek tunes, rolling electric guitars, like a meeting between a biting BB King and a bunch of overexcited muezzin."
4/4 Keys. Philippe Barbot - Télérama
"The politically aware songs of their first cassette in 1992 have been transformed into an existential quest...a rock of the sullen sands which speaks of destiny, solitude and hidden desire."
Bouziane Daoudi - Libération
"They play a wondrous and expressive 'desert blues', which fascinates us just as much as this people from far away."
Mélanie Holé - Guitarist Magazine
"As far as the beauty of the desert which their songs evoke, close your eyes and you won't be far from seeing the horizon."
Fédérique Briard - Marianne
"A magnificent album, whose songs help you to walk with head held high, and eyes trained directly on adversity."
François Bensignor - Altérités.com
"Tinariwen are coming north and bringing the light and airy breath of a musical poetry which is way too rare to be ignored."
Accor Magazine
"Wake up! This isn't just any old invitation to travel."
Alexis Campion - Le Journal de Dimanche
"We were expecting aggressive rock guitars, but they were tender and enveloping, like a blues which is stripped to the bone and essential."
Vibrations
"Tinariwen carry the marks of exile, separation and return. Their journey and their perfect presentation summed up the spirit of the festival [in the Desert]: survival without abandoning the essence of yourself."
Les Inrockuptibles
GERMANY
"A musical style carried by blues guitars, powered by rhythmical and hypnotic repetition and the exotic sounding singing in the Tuareg-language Tamascheck, exotic for us at least. It's a music whose fascination can be felt across and far beyond the seas of sand."
Hamburger Abendblatt
"To this Mississippi-less delta-blues even the holy John Lee Hooker would have listened."
Münchner Abendzeitung
"With their electrifying version of traditional tuareg-songs they've made their reputation as authentic soul rebels from the desert into an opportunity and for that they should return home as winners of the BBC World Music Awars 2005 in the Africa category."
TAZ
"A distinct style that combines different elements including African storytelling traditions, the Arabian art of melody and western instrumentation."
Süddeutsche Zeitung
AUSTRALIA
"...the music is distinctly rock, masterful, inspired, different and as authentic as it's possible to imagine. This is where the blues came from."
Shane Nichols - Financial Review
"This album isn't a document of so-called "world music" to be exclaimed over and considered as exotic. The music of Tinariwen is harsh and uncompromising, a reflection as much of their lives as the liberating force of their sounds."
5/5 Stars. Kate Welsman - Age Entertainment Guide
"'Amassakoul' is a staggeringly brilliant album - for its dak, dirty take on Saharan blues; for the incredible story it tells of a people gripped by war, drought and famine, and their subsequent self-redefinition in the face of modernisation."
4.5 / 5 Stars. Dan Rule - The Big Issue.
"this is a world music classic."
Larry Schwartz - Agenda.
"A highly original release."
Bendigo Advertiser.
"this is big-sky desert blues worth fighting for."
Qantas In-Flight Magazine
USA
"In Tinariwen the sacred darkness of American blues meets the intense heat of Saharan tribal culture, and the unruly power of classic rock and roll meets the stability and wisdom of old world percussion. I am in awe of the music of Tinariwen, and I can't think of one reason why someone else wouldn't like it."
Jared St. Martin Brown - 1340mag.com
"Tinariwen capture the poetry and hardships of nomadic life and exile in hypnotic, modal vocals and a tangle of sidewinding riffs that sound like a mirage come true: Keith Richards, Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Toure picking side by side under an unforgiving sun."
David Fricke - Rolling Stone.
"This is a stunning musical expedition."
Zookbeat.com
"That's what Tinariwen did and do: help fuel a revolution in sound and poetry. The stripped, clicked blues gallop of its guitars - think a minimalist-minded Keith Richards joining Television's Lloyd and Verlaine at their steadiest - is as hypnotic as its mix of creepoing call-and-response vocals, ancient wails and ageless lyrical concerns, dire and dear."
NY Press.
"This is a wonderfully evocative album from one of Mali's most promising new acts."
Banning Eyre - Afropop
"Tinariwen is unlike any musical group in the world, not just because of where they live, but because of their connection to armed rebellion, and because of their intense guitar driven songs."
Jonathan Curiel - San Francisco Chronicle (USA)
"Mystical, sublime, and totally engaging, Ammasakoul demands to be placed alongside any conventional guitar-based pop album, or for that matter, any album from any genre released this year."
Eric Arnold - East Bay Express (USA)
(Re: Concert in Columbus, Ohio 30/10/04) "Think of what would happen if bluesman John Lee Hooker were a Sufi, and you have an idea of what this music is about. The sound isn't merely hypnotic; it's one prolonged, spiralling trance. The trance lasted an hour and a half Thursday night..."
Jory Farr - The Columbus Dispatch (USA)
(Re: Concert at Joe's Pub, NY 25/10/04) "The songs about loneliness, nostalgia, and of course, deserts (the band's name in Tamashek) demanded surrender while also inspiring a transportive sort of joy"
Richard Gehr - Village Voice (USA)
(Re: Concert at Joe's Pub, NY 25/10/04) "Tinariwen's music seems inseparable from its origins. With the drones and circular patterns, songs can extend like sweeping desert landscapes. And like a nomad traversing those sands, Tinariwen's music carries only essentials and needs nothing more."
John Pareles - New York Times (USA)
"Tinariwen has emerged from the Touareg rebellions of the Malian Sahara to deliver a gritty and soulful record...that has gained the band a growing reputation as North Africa's modern day mystics."
Global Rhythm (USA)
"Another stunning effort, Amassakoul finds the band honing its art and spreading its wings musically to great effect"
Tad Hendrickson - Amazon.com (USA)
(Re: Concert in Seattle, 3/11/04) "Tinariwen rocks! I was so delighted to catch their show on a dark, dreary Seattle evening. It took a little while, but their desert energy got the jazz-festival crowd revved, culminating in much dancing and shouting for encores."
Scott Stevens - 'Spin The Globe', KAOS FM (USA)
(Re: Concert in Santa Fe, 8/11/04) "Amazing show!!!... best concert of the year here...maybe of the decade...)
Jack Kolkmeyer - 'Brave New World, KBAC (USA)
(Re: Concert in Santa Fe, 8/11/04) "Pure, untranslated, unfiltered joy filled the packed New Mexico nightclub hall as Tinariwen's nomad voodoo soul worked its spell on all present"
Bill Nevins - Dirty Linen (USA)
(Re: Cerritos Center, Cerritos, 7/11/04) "A compelling musical entity...they drew listeners into an extraordinary musical world, in which the exotic, the foreign and the familiar all managed to find common cause."
Don Heckman - LA Times (USA)
(Re: Concert at Lisner Auditorium 1/11/04) "The result was sublime and joyous, and had listeners dancing in the aisles."
Mark Jenkins - Washington Post (USA)
(Re: Concert at Cultural Center, Chicago 9/11/04) "The concert was fantastic. The response was unbelievable. It was a HUGE hit."
Michael Orlove - Programmer, Chicago Cultural Center (USA)
"The stories about Tinariwen are wonderful, but you don't need to know them to tell that this is the real thing."
Rootsworld (USA)
"Like the desert the Kel Tamashek inhabit, this music has a quiet, stirring mystery."
Billboard (USA)
"'The Radio Tisdas Sessions is a cultural revolution set to music"
1340 Mag (USA)
"...like the Sahara's answer to the Grateful Dead"
Sean Barlow - Afropop Worldwide (USA)
MALAYSIA
"But for true revolution, we need to look beyond the Buena Vista bandwagon and in the deepest of Africa - for that is where the continent's banner attractions of 2004 hail. [Amassakoul] is an album that not only instructs and informs but - in the days of false music and heroism - enriches."
Nantha Kumar - The Star (Malaysia)