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Group Inerane

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BY Dave Morris   October 22, 2008 10:10

Editorial Rating:

There will always be questions of how releases like this one are shaped by the tastes of the westerners recording and marketing them. Unlike fellow Touareg guitar-slingers Tinariwen’s recordings, which were produced to fit in on European public radio, intrepid documentarian Hisham Mayet’s recordings of Group Inerane (reissued here on CD after last year’s vinyl sold out) are much more raw. Vocals distort, the guitars are dry and crackling, and trilling squeals fill the air — although songs like “Ano Nagarus” are sprawling and hypnotic, with a healthy dose of the blues, the raucous “Nadan al Kazawnin” sounds like an African answer to garage rock, which makes them perfect for the psych/garage-oriented audience who follow Sublime Frequencies. The producer’s influence on the listening experience is inevitable and, in this case, not a bad thing, though purists might disagree. But Group Inerane leader Bibi Ahmed’s passionate singing and the players’ singular sense of rhythm — they play a kind of uptight shuffle that sounds like a barrelhouse pianist struggling to suppress a twitch — is still remarkable, no matter how you dress it up.

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