Tinariwen – The Radio Tisdas Sessions

Wedge

I saw one of Tinariwen’s earliest London shows. It was an exotic mixture of West African sounds and almost Jimi Hendrix guitar motifs blended together to cast a spell over the audience that sat there that night.

So here I am, twenty years later, discussing some of the bands earliest recordings and reacquainting myself with that dizzying memory from all that time ago. These recordings are now presented in a marvellous gatefold sleeve album with an eight-page insert notes and on beautiful 180-gramme white vinyl.

Kedou Ag Ossad’s distinct guitar playing is in evidence from the opening track “Le Chant Des Fauves”, with its finger-picked style reminding me of Jimmy Page; this mixes with a light rhythm section and chanting male and female vocals that take you away to a campfire on a cold desert night. It’s a sound that permeates your inner soul and transfers you away from a dull London living room to a place where the sand dunes touch the sky.

Echoed guitar gives “Nar Djenetboubs” a laid-back feel and the vocals seem to sing to the four winds. The music has an odd kind of spaciousness to it that could only come from the place it was created. “Imidiwaren” is a true desert blues track, with its Carlos Santana-like guitar picking and a riff that sounds almost like The Doors track “The End”.

The riff becomes spellbinding as the track continues with the vocals becoming stronger and taking you higher. “Zin E’s Gourmeden” not only has a fuzzier guitar sound, but it also has a harder percussive element to it, making it sound like the most rock track on the album at this point, and not a million miles away from the kind of thing that Kawabata Makoto produces on some of the early Acid Mothers Temple albums.

“Afours Afours” is a jaunty blues track with rolling rhythm and the kind of chanting that would get you up and dancing on the coldest desert nights. A mixture of Eastern and blues guitar playing becomes “Tessalit”, with its vocals that call out to the empty blue sky, and you can almost feel the breeze blowing on top of the dunes. “Kedou Kedou” has almost a touch of Led Zeppelin about its guitar fugue and carries a certain swagger to it. Again, the beautiful echoed guitar work that drifts through the track makes it fairly meditative.

Even though the Assouf style is prominent throughout the album (this is a particular way of playing guitar), there is still a mixture of influences present on each track. “Mataraden Anexan” encompasses all of these together to great effect and even has some guitar runs that wouldn’t have been out of place on Australian band The Cruel Sea’s early nineties releases.

“Bismillah” seems to be played on acoustic guitar tuned to some strange intonation and gives off the peculiar effect of almost being an Incredible String Band song; the guitar work is stunning and is probably one of my favourite pieces on the album. After this is a terrific live version of “Tessalit” recorded at the Festival Au Desert – Tin Essako; I just wish it lasted longer, and also there is a bonus track called “Ham Tinahgin Ane Yallah”.

Twenty years later Tinariwen’s first album can still transport you to the rolling deserts that it was created in. The starry nights and the boiling days are summed up well in this collection of songs that sound as fresh now as they did all those years ago. The Radio Tisdas Sessions is a stunning release that has obviously been put out with love and care, going by the copious notes that come with the album. One to savour on our own hot summer evenings.

-Gary Parsons-