Kidal

There's a raw beauty in Tamikrest's rock'n'roll. It's there in the driving, insistent groove that powers the songs, the lean, snaking bass lines and the guitars that twine and twist around the melodies, and the utterly natural musical blending of Sahel Africa, the Maghreb, and the West - a reflection of influences as diverse as Pink Floyd, Rachid Taha, and flamenco. Yet the Sahara, and the people who live there, is always firmly at its heart.

"This music was founded on a very precise cause, the Tuareg cause," Ag Mossa told journalist Andy Morgan in 2013. They might be threatened on all sides, but they won't give up, and this album celebrates who the Tuareg are, the Kel Tamasheq ("those who speak Tamasheq"), the keepers of an ancient and endangered cultural voice.

Tamikrest's new album is the music of defiance, of hope. It's rock'n'roll from the Sahara, the sound of the Tuareg dream, a dream that will be renewed again, in their ancestral town: Kidal.