Saturday, 21 March 2009

Review - Tunng - & Tinariwen - Leicester De Montfort Hall, Thursday 19th March 2009

Tunng - & Tinariwen - Leicester De Montfort Hall, Thursday 19th March 2009

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7 out of 10

The history of musical collaboration is littered with casualties; Bolton & Dylan. Ol’ Dirty Bastard & Phil ’Geezah’ Collins. Bono n’ Sinatra. The list is as endless as void in Simon Cowell’s soul. Thankfully, there have also been enormous successes such as this meeting of the desert and the ’folktronic’. According to Tunng’s angel-in-a-blue-frock Becky Jacobs, their partnership with Touareg giants Tinariwen is only a week old. This must be a Saharan ’week’, though - slightly longer than a regular one. The combination is astonishing - a trio of immaculately-robed Malians flanked by a bunch of modern-day British hippies. Jools Holland must be salivating at the thought.

The feeling was of moving simultaneously backwards and forwards in time, emphasised by the very festival-friendly dreaminess of most of the music. The very definition of ’tight but loose’, the DMH crowd was treated to rhythms from a giant egg, laptop booms and blips, ice shards of guitar and some odd multi-coloured organ pipes, possibly looted from the Early Learning Centre. On the rare occasion that tempos were raised, spines tingled throughout the hall - worth the price of admission alone. Closing with more Tunng-centric tunes, such as their cover of Bloc Party’s The Pioneers, the air was full of a static-charged, musical sandstorm. A worthy tag-team - let us hear more!

Listen: www.myspace.com/tunng & www.myspace.com/tinariwen

Tracklist:

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