Afrique Victime (studio album) by Mdou Moctar

A lot of music demands your immediate attention. It gives you all it can hoping that it will stick in your brain. “Afrique Victime” is a much more subtle album. The nimble guitar work and steady drums slowly but surely win you over track by track. The lyrics are simple but so endearingly genuine with descriptions of home and girls there. This quiet investment makes moments like the solo on the titular “Afrique Victime” stand out even more. They are extremely skilled musicians that bring it when they are ready to. I do hope they go out more often but they certainly have my attention now.

Afrique Victime is so much fun it transcends language (however if time to translate the listener discover poetic meditations on love, religion and the exploitation of and inequalities within Western Africa.) I could see why this album has been so loved the world over. Yes, Mdou's astounding electric guitar playing is a highlight but the rhythm section is hypnotic. A really solid rock album.

One of the best in 2021

Really good fusion of Saharan music and rock, for me one of the best albums of 2021. Highly recommend

I will shamelessly admit I had no idea who Mdou Moctar is prior to listening to this album, so you can easily imagine it was quite the experience, something like a punch in the face. The first thing I noticed is that - in my opinion at least - the production’s handling is exemplary. Despite adding some not so subtle psychedelic touches to the African/blues rhythms, everything remains so bright, almost crystal-clear. Of course, this can’t be a coincidence, it has to be intentional and I believe it is connected with the artist’s general attitude towards his art. Music is for him a means to an end, used to raise the awareness and cohesiveness of the community, so he needs a "transparent" sound that will allow his point to come across more easily -other factors that contribute to that result are a slight tendency towards repetitiveness and the contrast between the light nature of the music and the dark themes explored by the lyrics. In that sense, the obvious comparison as far as 2021 albums go would be - considering how much I liked that one, this is one of the biggest compliments I can give - We Are by Jon Batiste. Actually the first part of the above sentence regarding the value of music in terms of spreading socio-politcal messages is almost a copy/paste from my comment on that album, as I find it fits like a glove here as well. The vocals are another great example of his willingness to get everyone involved, a “the more the merrier” mentality if you will. The fact that he is a modern guitar hero doesn’t hurt either. When he gets too fancy he somewhat loses me (if I'm being completely honest, I’m not that much of a guitar guy to begin with, so it's more my problem than anything else), when he compromises some of his flair for lyricism’s sake, the world instantly becomes a better place, he is so convincing yet not forcing, you 'll follow him of your own free will without asking any questions or having second thoughts. I read somewhere that the studio barely does his work justice and you have to watch him live to conceive the full extent of his artistic statement, a claim which I suspect may be true.