A band that needs no introductions – if you’re not spoonfed by MTV crap or somehow prejudiced against world music – Touareg nomads Tinariwen are back with their fourth album Imidiwan. Once again they manage to amaze with beautiful compositions in the same vein that cemented their name on the top of world music. The tried and tested desert blues formula of twanging guitars, rolling rhythms and chanting still seems fresh; and the guitars will surely inspire a whole new generation of afropop, or fit in with the lo-fi stuff that’s coming out of US these days. Just listen to the closer Era Tasfata Adounia, which go into an amazing drone in the last four minutes. This is the real desert sun drone, boys!. 4/5

Tinariwen are largely content to do one thing brilliantly. Like the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, Kraftwerk and AC/DC, they have created a sound that is theirs and theirs alone – a rolling, dusty groove whipped mercilessly into great uncoiling waves of rhythm, overlaid with the mournful, atavistic moan that remains the expressive birthright of the world’s dispossessed, whether they be Mississippi cotton-pickers, displaced Aborigines or north African nomads. Guardian