Leading figures of the new wave of Tuareg music and major revitalizers of assouf (known as the “desert blues”), Imarhan present their album Essam, on which they step away from the absolute dominance of guitars for the first time to explore electronic soundscapes and evocative productions. Ancestral poetry, funk, psychedelic rock, and Pan-African rhythms have always been the guiding principles of the Algerian quintet’s sound universe, which now both winks at cosmic folk-pop and aligns itself with the cutting edge of the dance floor. The band, which does not identify with the vague and reductive label of “world music”, continues to prove that tradition and modernity are not opposing realities, but rather fuel each other.