Don’t call it world music: Imarhan have been working on their bone-dry yet psychedelic rock from the heart of the Sahara since 2006. On their fourth album, the quintet deals with the deteriorating situation in their home region on the border with Mali, but also celebrates cohesion and community.
And that can also be heard with call-and-response elements and mixed-gender (!) choirs in pieces like “Tin Arayth” or “Téllalt” or the “Adounia Touchal” written by Tinariwen member Eyadou Ag Leche, accompanied by the characteristic guitars of Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane (also known as Sadam), Hicham Bouhasse and Abdelkader Ourzig, the percussions of Haiballah Akhamouk and Tahar Khaldi on bass.
This time the band got support from friends like their long-time sound engineer Maxime Kosinetz, who acts as producer, and the multi-instrumentalist Emile Papandreou from the French band UTO, who contributes his expertise in programming the ambient electronic surfaces. They recorded the album in their Aboogi Studio in their hometown of Tamanrasset, which also serves as a kind of community center. Despite all the political and social challenges that the band addresses, ESSAM (in German: lightning) sounds light, lively, even cheerful. Music means freedom – and hardly anyone shows this more beautifully than Imarhan.
This review appears in Musikexpress 2/2026.