NEW ALBUM AFRIQUE VICTIME OUT TODAY, MAY 21ST ON MATADOR
Ahead of the release of his hotly-tipped new album Afrique Victime this Friday, May 21st, Modu Moctar has released a further preview with hypnotic new song ‘Taliat’. Listen HERE.
“Oh poor girl / She gave him her heart and he broke it / I pray to God to never experience unrequited love and the pain of a broken heart” Moctar sings in Tamasheq over lyrical electric guitar runs and ecstatic rhythm.
“Taliat means woman,” Moctar says. “In our community, women are queens, they have a lot of power, that why I use the term taliat to talk about them. A woman in the Tuareg community has to be protected, but she also has to be treated as equal.”
Praise for Afrique Victime:
“He is at once Tuareg rock’s past and future, expanding on the legacy of his forebears while remaining laser-focused on the issues facing Niger and Africa today.” – Pitchfork on ‘Afrique Victime’ (Best New Track)
“The world’s most uniquely thrilling guitarist” – Dazed & Confused
“Sounding like a rock god from tomorrow, Moctar embodies an imagined future, a world connected by Bluetooth and bus rides, where a guitarist from the Sahara holds as much cultural cache as a Western pop star” – DJ ‘Album Of The Month’
“… the hottest shredder in the Sahara, the Tuareg currently taking desert blues deeper into space than anyone else has yet dared” – MOJO
“… At once fiercely modern and as ancient as the Niger river” – Uncut (9/10)
credit: WH MoustaphaEarlier in May, Moctar broadcast a live performance filmed over three consecutive nights in Niamey, Niger. The i Paper described it as: “A beautiful, accidental party in the Sahara (…) Moctar is a magnetic, if unlikely, rock star on the brink of a global breakthrough”, while The Spectator noted: “The introductory screen text for the performance explained that what had been intended to be a single performance ended up being three on consecutive nights, and that kids came from all around, attracted by the noise. I was sceptical about that: kids? Really? But a substantial part of the crowd that gathered really was actual kids. And at the start of the final song, ‘Chet Boghassa’, they ran to the empty space in front of the band and danced in the way that only kids do: unselfconsciously and with giddy abandon. It was a joyful end to a brilliant performance.”
Watch the performance of ‘Chet Boghassa’ HERE
Listen back to Mdou Moctar’s guest show on NTS HERE
Read Dazed & Confused profile piece HERE
‘Taliat’ follows singles ‘Tala Tannam’ and ‘Afrique Victime’, which together have enjoyed plays across BBC 6 Music, Radio 2, NTS, Reprezent and Soho Radio.
In addition to vinyl, CD, picture disk and digital formats, the album will be available as a special and limited cellphone edition. Hearkening back to the way Moctar’s music originally spread and proliferated across the Sahara via word-of-mouth Bluetooth mobile phone swaps, this collector’s edition of Afrique Victime arrives pre-loaded onto a classic Nokia 6120 handset and specially mastered for it. Pre-order HERE.
Afrique Victime sees the virtuoso Tuareg songwriter and musician boldly reforging contemporary Saharan music and “rock music” by melding guitar pyrotechnics, full-blast noise, and field recordings with poetic meditations on love, religion, women’s rights, inequality, and Western Africa’s exploitation at the hands of colonial powers.
Moctar hails from Agadez, a desert village in rural Niger. Inspired by traditional Tuareg melodies and YouTube videos of Eddie Van Halen’s six string techniques, he mastered the guitar and created his own burning style. A born charismatic, Mdou went on to tell his story as an aspiring artist by writing, producing, and starring in the first Tuareg language film: a remake of Purple Rain called Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai. The word and the sound travelled across West Africa via mobile phone data cards, a popular form of local music distribution. Grueling DIY world tours and albums on the independent US label Sahel Sounds followed, including 2019’s landmark Ilana: The Creator, which earned Mdou an ecstatic international audience.
Afrique Victime is result of the combined efforts of Mdou and the members of the band that shares his name: rhythm guitarist and longstanding collaborator Ahmoudou Madassane, who helped form the revolutionary first woman-fronted Tuareg guitar band Les Filles De Illighadad; drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, also a member of both the well-known Niger band, Sultanat Star De L’air and the longest running wedding band in Agadez; and producer and bassist Mikey Coltun who over the past three years has played over 500 shows on three continents as Mdou Moctar’s bassist, road manager, producer/recording engineer, and friend. Coltun recorded and produced Afrique Victime around the band’s travels in 2019 – working in studios, apartments, hotel rooms, venue backstages, and in field recordings in Niger.
Recording as a touring outfit forged a live wire new sound, and if Ilana was a late ’60s early ’70s ZZ Top and Black Sabbath record – Afrique Victime is mid-’70s to early ’80s Van Halen meets Black Flag meets Black Uhuru, with the ferocity of Moctar’s electric guitar and the band’s hypnotic rhythm section on awe-instilling form.
The needs of Agadez are a major part of what drives Moctar as an artist and promoting the region’s youth through music is an especially personal cause. “I know what it’s like to have been in that position,” he says, “to not have the support of your family, or the money for guitars or strings, it’s really hard. I have a lot of support from the younger generation, because I help them out a lot. When I get back from tour, I give them gear that I bought while I was away so they can go out and form their own bands.”
Says Coltun: “In Agadez the music and feeling at Tuareg weddings is exactly like the best of Western DIY/Punk shows. It’s loud, energetic and powerful. There is a sense of everyone helping out. Tuaregs are a tight community. If you’re Tuareg you’re considered family.”
The music listeners are the beneficiaries of the staggeringly powerful do-it-yourself musical ethic of Mdou Moctar – the man and the band – who’ve worked so hard to bring the spirits of families and communities in Niger to the West. Afrique Victime sounds and feels like a Tuareg hand reaching down from the sky, and we are very lucky for this chance to get lifted.
TRACK LIST
- Chismiten
- Taliat
- Ya Habibti
- Tala Tannam
- Untitled
- Asdikte Akal
- Layla
- Afrique Victime
- Bismilahi Atagah
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