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Tribal desert blues in the past would have fallen into the world music category, sidelined to the section in record racks and only embraced by a limited audience. With the growth of roots music over the last decade there has been much more focus on blues and folk-based sounds, opening our ears to a wealth of music, especially from the African continent.

Tinariwen have found their niche in the world/roots universe and consolidated it with this, their fourth album – Imidiwan : Companions. Their previous release Aman Iman (Water Is Life) caught many people’s attention and they have extended themselves and delved deeper into their world of droning Saharan blues.

The title Companions is a very telling one as the songs on the album often focus on human relationships and their memories and tributes to their fellow Touareg people. Tahult In (My Salutation) salutes the men and women that sacrificed so much when their uprising was violently suppressed by the Malian army in 1963.

At the other end of the spectrum is the song Enseqi Ehad Didagh (I Lie Down Tonight) where lead singer Ibrahim Ag Alhabib sings an aching  personal ode to a loved one. “I have travelled for days across the desert of anxiety / I’m thirsty, parched, my heart and soul crave water” he sings, conjuring images of loneliness and how the desert environment can parallel the emotional state of its inhabitants.

The guitar playing of the Touareg musicians is at the centre of their music. It shapes and creates the mood of each song with its meditative and dancing melodies, filtered through electric guitars and reverb laden amplifiers. That gives the songs their edginess and parched and dusty sense of space. Combined with the unobtrusive percussion the songs create a hypnotic effect as on the track Tenhurt (The Doe) with its circling riff and multi layered singing from the female backing singers.

Accompanying the CD is a 30 minute DVD that gives an insight into the world of the Tinariwen and the effect the music has on the Touareg people. We see men drinking tea and discussing the global success of the band and why they are so important, as well as snatches of performances in the desert at dusk and in rudimentary recording sessions. The DVD is useful in that it provides context and some wonderful images of the landscape and people that inform the music so strongly.

Chabiba (Youth) sums up the album when Alhabib sings “I’ll never forget my friends, wherever they may be / I’ll never forget my parents and my sisters whom I love”. They are simple words that are expressed over a tender and beautifully haunting musical backdrop.

Alhabib, one of the key fathers of the Touareg sound, has led a wandering life through Algeria, Gaddafi training camps and onto the world stage. Along the way he has lost friends and his father who was executed by the Mali army. As a result, even without the translated lyrics, the soul and emotion of Tinariwen’s songs comes across strongly, such is the weight of experience that is invested in their music.

Companions will move you if you take the time to explore Tinariwen’s history, but regardless of that it will also move your feet with the musicians’ infectious and insistent playing. Alongside recent releases such as the Nigerian 1970s compilations, Damon Albarn’s Mali Music and Konono No1, Tinariwen show how truly diverse and rich African music is and always has been.