reviews:

Founded in the wake of Tinariwen's success, Terakaft have inevitably operated under the shadow of their elder Saharan cousins. Kel Tamasheq, their fourth album, brings a more distinctive identity to their desert blues. The serpentine guitar riffs, insistent handclaps, massed chants and rolling grooves remain intact, but their sound is less cluttered (and often less forlorn) than Tinariwen's. Producer Justin Adams brings subtle sonic expertise to tracks such as the shimmering Awa Adounia and friends from French group Lo'Jo add female voices and violin elsewhere. Completed before the conflict in north Mali, numbers such as Tirera and Imad Halan starkly evoke the terror of war. FOUR STARS --The Observer

Highly Recommnded. FOUR STARS --Songlines

Featuring the usual cyclical guitar swirls, call and response vocal chants and urgent handclap rhythms, Kel Tamasheq (The People Who Speak Tamashek; ie, the Touareg) is as infectiously engaging as you'd expect from an offshoot of the Tinariwen taproot. But while the music retains familiar desert-blues stylings, the lyrics reflect the traumatic disruption in the rapidly-changing world of the Touareg, with criticism of the Ansar Dine fundamentalist invaders in Imad Halan, and several reflections on the turmoil of war, most poetically in Taddaza. FOUR STARS --The Independent