Imarhan come to Berlin for a special live concert at Gretchen in Kreuzberg this April to celebrate their fantastic new album Essam on City Slang.
ESSAM is the band’s fourth album, recorded with the same core lineup, but marks a significant shift in their sound and approach. Musically, it marks a departure from the rocky, bluesy, psychedelic Tuareg guitar-driven sound influenced by Tinariwen’s heritage — moving toward something more open, modern, and exploratory.
For the first time, their long-time sound engineer Maxime Kosinetz stepped in as producer. He travelled to Tamanrasset with Emile Papandreou (of the French duo UTO), a multi-instrumentalist who introduced electronic elements by sampling live instruments and reprocessing them in real time with a modular synthesizer — subtly reshaping the band’s sonic identity.
Imarhan, meaning ‘the ones I care about’, started out around 2008, a loose collection of friends who began to play together. Their reflects their cultural and generational background; dry guitar riffs, pop melodies and pan-African rhythms which draw on traditional Tuareg music, African ballads and the modern pop and rock the band heard growing up.
