Ilana
The creator

"The Tuareg musician's first full-band studio album is an incandescent set of guitar music with a spontaneous, celebratory air-and a latent urgency reflecting the region's very real difficulties ... While Ilana will scan for most listeners as rock, there's little of the style's machismo. If anything, Moctar wants to draw attention to the plight of the women in his country. "I want the world to understand that the women of the desert need help," he told Stereogum. "They don't have water to drink, there's no medicine in the hospitals." It's neither bootstrapping origin stories nor rock'n'roll fantasies so much as the grim realities facing Moctar and millions of others around the world that give Ilana its considerable power".

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"Let's make no bones about it: "Ilana", the politically-charged title track of Nigerien desert blues guitarist Mdou Moctar's new album Ilana: The Creator, is the most intense and technically perfect piece of rock and roll I've heard this whole quarter. On it, Moctar goes all in on energy, lets loose tidal waves of melody, and shreds on electric guitar as only he can".

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"Top of the world" - "Saharan rock fans have good reason to be excited by this new release. From the raw and punchy opening number 'Kamane Tarhanin' to the anthemic bars of 'Wiwasharnine', Mdou Moctar's first professionally produced studio album delivers a healthy abundance of fiery and furious electric Touareg guitar ... Moctar's playing has evolved technically (...) yet retains a blistering, frenetic energy, combining urgent riffs with poignant lyrics that deal with emotive and topical subjects such as ex-colonial powers' exploitation of African resources - as on the title-track. This is raucous, vital, invigorating stuff and it's almost impossible not to love it".

"At the center of each song here is Moctar's mercurial approach to guitar playing, with liquid lead lines dancing around each song like the sparks floating free from a bonfire. The shredding hard-rock influence that sneaks into "Tarhatazed" only gives him another tool in his musical arsenal".