{"id":10018,"date":"2017-02-02T05:00:05","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T05:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/02\/02\/first-listen-tinariwen-elwan\/"},"modified":"2017-02-02T05:00:05","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T05:00:05","slug":"first-listen-tinariwen-elwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/first-listen-tinariwen-elwan\/","title":{"rendered":"First Listen: Tinariwen, 'Elwan'"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anastasia Tsioulcas<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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Tinariwen’s new album, Elwan<\/em>, comes out February 10. Courtesy of the artists<\/strong> hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Courtesy of the artists<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Since the Tuareg guitar band Tinariwen<\/a> from Mali was launched into the international stratosphere nearly 20 years ago, it’s become something<\/a> of a rite of passage<\/a> for rock musicians to guest on their albums. This time around, for Elwan<\/em> (Elephants), their eighth international release, they’re joined by Kurt Vile, Mark Lanegan<\/a> (formerly of Screaming Trees), Alain Johannes<\/a> (formerly of Queens of the Stone Age) and guitarist Matt Sweeney, who’s worked with everyone from Will Oldham to Run The Jewels.<\/p>\n

But that’s all a sideshow: The main draw continues to be Tinariwen itself \u2014 with the band’s swirling guitars, rhythms inspired by the gait of camels and gutturally declaimed poetry.<\/p>\n

The band has become globally peripatetic \u2014 partly due to their near-constant touring, but also because the situation in their home community in northern Mali continues to be incredibly dangerous<\/a> and culturally toxic<\/a>. As a result, the recording sessions for Elwan<\/em> were split between the Paris suburbs, a studio in Joshua Tree, Calif., and a southern Moroccan town called M’hamed El Ghizlane, an oasis very near the Algerian border and home to its own Saharan music festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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