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What the papers say about…

“AMAN IMAN”

Andy Gill, Independent "Hypnotic skeins of cyclical guitar figures entwine around songs that both illuminate the social and political conditions of the Touareg and bring the nomadic desert mindset to life. World music album of the year and blues album of the year, in one"

**** MOJO "thrilling" "...snarling, spitting walls of electric buzz"

****UNCUT "This extraordinary band are clearly pushing for more than
cult world-music status. They fully merit it."

****MUSIC WEEK "Prowling guitars and pulsating rhythms, this should break them
through to a whole new audience."

****TIME OUT "powerful, hypnotic sounds, informed as much by classic
American porch blues and Jimi Hendrix pyrotechnics as the percussive density
and Tamashak guitar sound...."

***Q MAGAZINE "thrillingly unlike anything else on the planet."

****THE GUARDIAN "exhilarating"

*****THE INDEPENDENT (Album of the Week) "....'Aman Iman', an album that deserves to hoist Tinariwen onto the international stage.." "...a
mesmeric evocation of the mood of yearning inculcated through years of exile
and nourished by the vast emptiness of the desert.."

*****THE SUN "exotic, mesmerising sounds"

*****THE DAILY TELEGRAPH - Pop CD of the Week "With its spacey Fender
Stratocaseer sounds and elemental rock feel, Tinariwen's music has always
had the potential to appeal well beyond the confines of the world music
audience....."

****THE TIMES (KNOWLEDGE) - CD of the Week "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."

*****FROOTS "their most potent stew of raw, dirty Tuareg roots music yet"

*****DAILY EXPRESS "Exotic, easy-going and hypnotic, this is an
awe-inspiring album"

*****EVENING STANDARD "Contemporary desert cool"

*****WORD MAGAZINE "Is exquisite an appropriate word to describe what is
essentially a rock and roll album? Probably not. But this is, and it
always will be."

‘AMASSAKOUL'

“…an intoxicating, hypnotic sound…” 5 / 5 Stars Andy Gill – The Independent (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)

“..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)

“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 Renton – fRoots (UK)

“Like a jewel in the sand, Tinariwen 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)

“ the most exciting guitar band I’ve heard in a long time… the band’s nomadic heritage informs the words, which explore, at the most basic level, how we live on this earth. Not many artists in our musical mainstream have managed to do this’
3 / 3 stars The Sunday Times

TINARIWEN LIVE ETC

“Awesome! So bloody effortless and simple.” Andy Kershaw – BBC Radio (UK)

“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)

“Tinariwen are hot – Sahara hot” Simon Broughton – The Evening Standard(UK)

“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)

“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 Renton - fRoots (UK)

“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)

“…the audience were treated to an entrancing hour of gently pulsing desert blues.”
BBC Online (UK)

“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)

“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, bluesy riffing – the men’s voices world weary, yet imbued with a strange fervour. The Telegraph Magazine (UK)

“’The Radio Tisdas Sessions is a cultural revolution set to music”
1340 Mag (USA)

“We were expecting aggressive rock guitars, but they were tender and enveloping, like a blues which is stripped to the bone and essential.”
Vibrations (France)

“…like the Sahara’s answer to the Grateful Dead”
Sean Barlow - Afropop Worldwide (USA)

“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 (France)

“The group, which formed in a refugee camp in Lybia, makes a raw and earthy sound with their gutsy rebel songs.” The Times (UK)

“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.” The Guardian (UK)

“…the world’s most exotic band.” The Daily Telegraph (UK)

“…relentlessly funky boogie” MOJO (UK)