Tamikrest
Glitterhouse Rec. Tamikrest : Toumastin (ML,2011)***°
Tamikrest were influenced like several other Touareg guitar bands by listening to tapes of Tinarwen, Bob Marley and Dire Straits. The band, which existed since 2006, played at the Festival Au Desert in 2008 where they played together and jammed with the American/Australian band Dirtmusic. This was the beginning of a longer cooperation and an invitation to a world tour. This is their second release already, again produced by Chris Eckman of Dirtmusic. I didn’t hear the first one, but clearly Tamikrest shows a mixture of being electric rockers and folkblues singers. I assume they follow Tinarwen a bit, trying to have their own identity. I feel often a real sadness in the music, and a certain tiredness perhaps of the situation in some songs, while a certain element of handclaps and group harmony singing celebrations returns as well, including some female backing singers too (adding their own typical higher tone harmonies and some lililiiii-voiceover effects). The electric guitars are a bit different from other Touareg bands. Some of these electric guitar contributions are played slower and more stretched than usual, more emotional, like in electric rock music, while the other guitars pick, in a classic Touareg guitar way, or here and there give reggae-like accents. There’s nice group harmony singing but also slower lead songs. Little percussion was used, with some exceptions. There has been an injection of a few new ideas in the production. The album starts with an oooh, or OM-like introduction and also the last song comes back to this setting with a slow sad song conclusion that has a small cello arrangement to it. The electric guitars contributions on the first half of the album, played in a way as described earlier, are pretty distinctive and give the band their own originality. There are also a few more sad and simple songs in the second half. In between that is a small interesting picking improvisation with two cooperative guitars, fading out and into the next track, very much like original western picking guitar music. A nice album in the genre, but I keep wondering where that sad aspect is really coming from.
