Various Artists – Introducing Etran Finatawa (World Music Network)

The cover tells you everything you need to know. It’s the desert crossroads in Niger, where the Toureg and Wodnaabe nomads – two different and distinctive cultural groups have united. Introducing Etran Finatawa is the sound of West Africa, of the Sahara, of traditional instruments and percussion meeting electric guitars. And they’ve embraced the electric in a similar way to the likes of Ali Farka Toure or fellow Mali bluesmen Tinarwien, with a steady tribal percussive pulse and gentle webs of guitar, over which they wail in either of their two languages. The music has a hypnotic quality thanks to its repetition and its sounds are incredibly evocative, where even if the language passess over you, you can tell that Etran Finatawa are the voice of the desert.