Originally released in March 2013, NOMAD is the critically acclaimed album from the Tuareg guitarist, singer, and songwriter Omara “Bombino” Moctar.
At the invitation of The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, the Niger-born artist and his band travelled to Nashville for the recording of this album, helmed by Auerbach at his studio, Easy Eye Sound.
Bombino is hitting NZ shores to perform at WOMAD in March.
Reviews:
Born in northern Niger, Bombino is an ethnic Tuareg, a nomadic tribe spread
out across the Sahara Desert, and if he inherited a steady urge for going, it
shows in his guitar playing, which is informed by the fluid, melodic, and
graceful style of so many great African guitarists. But he's also listened and
studied the playing of Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler closely, and maybe a
little of J.J. Cale, too, another man whose guitar style embraces a sharp,
dusty-tinged desert tone, and somehow out of all this, Bombino emerges as a sort
of Dick Dale of the Sahara, with a guitar style that is uniquely all his own.
For this, his second album, Bombino traveled to Nashville to record with the
Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, and the result is a marvelous set, full of grit and
funky elegance, a kind of mesh of Tuareg rhythms with Deep South delta country
trance blues, and psychedelic, too, as if Jimi Hendrix and John Lee Hooker
somehow got spliced together. It's a wonderful listen from start to finish,
with heavily echoed vocals, and layers of snaky, sinewy guitar lines that build
and weave, separate and expand as each track goes on, until everything seems to
burst transformed into the immense sonic space of an ocean, or a desert, for
that matter. Although Bombino is a very political songwriter, he keeps his
lyrics and melodies taut, giving his graceful, spiraling, and relentless guitar
riffs plenty of room to do their thing. Highlights include the thickly chugging
garage guitar epic “Amidine” that opens the set, the amazing serpentine
guitar lines of “Imuhar,” the back porch Sahara country sound of
“Imidwan,” and the lovely “Tamiditine,” which closes things out, but
everything here certainly belongs and contributes to the rich, gritty, and
ultimately joyous tone of this wonderful album. ~ Steve Leggett –
Allmusic.com