Mdou Moctar has announced details of part two of the Niger EP series – featuring live and alternate versions of songs spanning the band’s discography recorded in their native Niger – which will be released digitally on October 25th. It followsNiger Vol.1 EP which is out now digitally. A physical release date for both EPs on limited vinyl has additionally been announced for March 10th. Pre-order HERE.
A preview of Vol. 2 is today available to listen to with a live version of ‘Ibitilan’. First appearing on 2019’s Blue Stage Session, the latest iteration of ‘Ibitilan’ captures the band’s renowned live energy in unmediated form, pushing the faders to their very limits.
“Ibitilan is a love song,” says producer and bassist Mikey Coltun. “Mdou sings about his love for a woman, comparing her to a beautiful valley with a stream running through it, how her skin is a yellow flower and her smile is like lightning. This particular recording was done in Agadez in 2017 at a wedding. Mdou and I had played three weddings a day for about a month and a half on that trip. It was like bootcamp. I loved it. Ibitilan is one of Mdou’s oldest songs and is covered by pretty much every Tuareg guitarist. We’ve played versions of this song lasting over 20 minutes. It’s definitely one of my favorites to play!”
An innovative alchemy of Tuareg folk, blues and rock, electric guitar pyrotechnics, field recordings and electronics with poetic call-to-arms lyrics about the plight of his homeland of Niger, Moctar’s 2021 album Afrique Victime swept end of year lists, achieving high placements in The Economist, The Guardian, The New York Times, Uncut, MOJO, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, NPR, Rolling Stone, Dazed & Confused, DJ, Crack and many others.
2022 saw the four-piece of Moctar, rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, bassist/producer Mikey Coltun and drummer Souleymane Ibrahim release the remix collection Afrique Refait, highlighting artists at the vanguard of electronic music across Africa. Resident Advisor called the Duma remix of ‘Untitled’, “a truly original record of distorted techno and doomy rock”, while writing the MC Yallah and Debmaster version of ‘Tala Tannam’ “introduces a contemporary club music vibe to Moctar’s thrilling and often gorgeous desert blues sound, the kind of rework that feels more like a cultural fusion than a simple remix“.
The Monthly Top 10 Albums of 2021
The West Australian Top 10 Albums of 2021
The Music Albums of 2021
Crack #16 Albums of 2021
DJ Mag Albums of 2021
Economist Best Albums of 2021
Gigwise #23 Albums Of The Year
The Guardian #10 Albums Of The Year
MOJO #20 Albums Of The Year
New York Times Best Albums of 2021 (Lindsay Zoladz, #2)
New York Times Best Albums of 2021 (Jon Pareles, #5)
New Yorker #4 Best Music of 2021
Rolling Stone #26 Albums Of The Year
Uncut #13 Albums of the Year
“The Tuareg guitarist and his bandmates deliver the fullest picture of his gifts yet.”
–Pitchfork (Best New Music)
“This one is essential… It’s musically dense, wildly psychedelic and politically sharp, with Moctar singing in his native tongue across the record to make for the year’s most quintessential guitar albums.” – Mixdown
“Moctar’s guitar is a tangled, twisted, blazing beam of light cutting across a black sky.”
– Rolling Stone
“Searing and soulful” – CLASH
“This is a group that is deeply zoned into one another’s nervous systems, grooving hard, moving as one.” –Aquarium Drunkard
“Afrique Victime, Moctar’s first album for Matador, seems poised to attract his largest audience yet” – Bandcamp
“scarcely has a Fender Stratocaster sounded more alive than in his hands… a propulsive, psychedelic sound that is at once delivered with the cathartic oomph of celebration and the urgent cadence of protest” – Guitar World
“As it becomes safe to go out again, seeing these songs live should be as early a priority as is reasonable.” – Under the Radar
“His electric guitar leaps up from the band’s rhythmic core to trill, twirl, swoop and scream”
–New York Times
“The world’s most uniquely thrilling guitarist” – Dazed & Confused
“Afrique Victime finds Moctar and his band in the studio delivering the raw power of their intense and transcendent live performances.” – Reverb
“Vital, wonderful music with cutting intensity” – i Paper ★★★★★
“This is guitar music, but likely to resonate with club heads. Unlike anything you’ve ever heard in the West, it laughs at the idea that music has run out of new sounds” – DJ ‘Album Of The Month’
“Transcendent” –MOJO ★★★★
“Mesmerizing meld of Tuareg folk tradition and modern rock” – Uncut (9/10)
“Mdou Moctar and his band are the true sound of youth resistance” – Line Of Best Fit (8/10)
“The consensus that is slowly forming is that he is not just one of the leading exponents of Sahel (Sub-Saharan) guitar music, but one of the finest and certainly most expressive, guitarists in the world” –MusicRadar
Mdou Moctar – Niger EP Vol 2. is out 25 October
via Matador Records / Remote Control Records.
