Bombino Announces New Album Azel Produced by Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth

Photo by Marije Kuiper

Tuareg guitarist Bombino is releasing his new album Azel on April 1 via Partisan. Dirty Projectors‘ Dave Longstreth produced the follow-up to 2013’s Nomad. Bombino has also shared in-studio footage of “Inar.” Watch below via Rolling Stone.

Bombino and Longstreth recorded the album at Applehead Studio in Woodstock, New York. Longstreth said in a statement: 

“I finally met Bombino last fall, walking into the sprawling barn studio in upstate New York where we’d record Bombino’s third studio album, Azel. There he was, relaxing on the couch, conversing in Tamasheq with his bandmates behind a barely perceptible smile. He was wearing a blue bubu, the traditional Tuareg formal attire, and bobbing his head along to the playback from studio’s stately Genelecs. Though he speaks Tamasheq, Arabic and French, he rarely speaks at all. Instead, he plays the guitar.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Bombino discussed how working with Longstreth compared to his experience working with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach (who produced Nomad):

I would say was more relaxed than working with Dan. Dan had a clear idea of what he wanted right away and he would direct us this way and that way until we had recorded what he already had in his head. With Dave he was very happy to be patient, and listen to what we were playing, without pushing us one way or another, and then slowly, over the course of days, would begin to shape things the way he wanted. I was very happy about the way Dave worked, because to work 
with Tuareg music and musicians can be very complicated. We are not like American musicians in many ways. Our skills and our knowledge are very different from Western musicians. And of course, our language
 and our culture is also very different. So this can be a big challenge, but Dave handled himself very gracefully. He would hang 
out with us, eat dinner with us and joke around. We had a lot of fun together. Really, it was a beautiful time.



Find his upcoming tour dates here.

Azel:

01 Akhar Zaman (This Moment)
02 Iwaranagh (We Must)
03 Inar (If You Know The Degree Of My Love For You)
04 Tamiditine Tarhanam (My Love, I Tell You)
05 Timtar (Memories)
06 Iyat Ninhay / Jaguar (A Great Desert I Saw)
07 Igmayagh Dum (My Lover)
08 Ashuhada (Martyrs Of The First Rebellion)
09 Timidiwa (Friendship)
10 Naqqim Dagh Timshar (We Are Left In This Abandoned Place)

Watch Bombino perform on Pitchfork.tv: