Tamikrest- Chatma (2013)

Tamikrest- Chatma (2013)

At least for me this is without a doubt one of the greatest surprises on this big and great musical world this year, Africa present like always when we talk about really good music, Chatma is the third record for these tuareg warriors of hot sands, a sound homage to tuareg women, in the middle of an hostile place for them, with situations like the one big Malala is facing, Chatma makes even more sense, power to the women in every corner of the world!

Tamikrest is a band from the Sahara desert in north Africa, an amazing place and the unusual birth place, as far as I know, of the blues via Mali, so here is another big chance for Mr. Thom Yorke to steal shamelessly really good riffs form these tuareg warriors who really know how to play guitars in a very creative way, for those who know, Yorke is famous for stealing ideas form advance artists like Bjork, the Hollies, Pink Floyd, Can, Burial, Aphex Twin, Neu!, Charles Mingus, Fela Kuti, Tinariwen and I don’t know who else and presenting them to the ignorant as new, so if you thought Yorke was an original…think about it twice!

Snake like guitars welcome us to Tisnant an Chatma, the beat lift us above the hot sands of the Sahara as the band advances in slow pace and slowly starts to evoke the desert god, we are shaken by powerful millenary vocals and intense percussion, but up to this point the spider like guitar lines are the ones who start creating this enormous musical juggernaut, we are burned slowly with those guitars creeping, as drums keep a steady and powerful beat, in perfect syncopation with bass, leaving enough space for the guitars to provide the fireworks, heat starts to burn with Imanin Bas Zihoun, a theme in which things really start cooking for Timakrest, as hell starts to break loose here, the melody is addictive and it’s impossible to ignore the magnificent guitar lines this band is able to produce along with powerful bass and drums work, which immediately drag us into this hot sun songs.

Bass is a powerful weapon in Tamikrest arsenal, and so the women vocals, which give Itous a powerful and groovy feeling, there is a heavy bass pounding throughout the theme, brutal enough to create a rock solid bottom for a memorable tune that immediately demands all of our attention, but the real star of this amazing records comes after the guitar passage named Achaka Achail Aynaian Daghchilan, where we are taken completely by surprise by a complete groove monster titled Djanegh Etoumast, an enormous tune that creates immediate addiction, with its amazing bass work and those fiery guitars that spark in the middle of the cold night in the desert, a really remarkable work by the rhythm section that creates the perfect setting for guitars to reach really glorious heights, and wait until you get to the middle section in which bass literally explodes on your faces as you are lured with an amazing guitar and immense drums, tuareg disco? Yeah for a moment of hot burning musical power!

Assikal is a placid and more experimental tune, here the band let the space flows at a slow burning pace, guitars still roar but in a more reflexive way and bass and drums are also more retracted and less in your face, giving us a chance to rest, but not for so long, because by the time we get to Takma, bass and drums immediately get locked into a beat once again high energy driven, the guitars once again fly in the middle of the night like sparks coming out of a fire in the middle of the desert, the band once again creates a complex and groovy monster and give us a lesson once again in interlocking instruments, perfect timing and a sense of rhythm the might provoke envy on most of their music peers.

Chatma is a great recording that urges you to hear it, an oasis of ideas in the middle of the desert, a creative explosion that definitely changes most of our conceptions about music, once again Africa bring us a musical monster of millenary knowledge that show us how little part of the road we have walked and why we must look to the Africa content to get some real answers.