Matador Records release ‘Afrique Victime’, the long-awaited new album by Mdou Moctar.
With ‘Afrique Victime’ the prodigious Tuareg guitarist and songwriter rips a new hole in the sky, 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.
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.
“The album’s showstopper, though, is the title track, seven-and-a-half intoxicating minutes of relentlessly surging rhythms, haunting vocals and muscular shredding that tips its hat to both Page and The Mars Vota’s Omar Rodriguez-Lopez.” - Uncut
Available to independent retailers on purple vinyl.