Long Road to Tiznit
Riverboat Records (37 mins)
Blues guitarist and serial collaborator Ramon Goose, most recently heard with the West African Blues Project, is back with a solo album. As the title suggests, this was formulated on his journey from Marrakech to Tiznit, building upon his experiments with Senegalese blues by adding Moroccan influences. Not that he’s left the collabs behind. Guest slots here feature guitarist Justin Adams and British-Indian singer Najma Akhtar, as well as local Moroccan musicians.
A theme of travel threads through the album, its songs tracing journeys across the Sahara and the Sahel. Goose bends his guitar around several styles from the region along the way, from Berber and Tuareg sounds from the north to mbalax in Senegal, via Songhai blues and Mauritanian tones too.
The album works best when the African elements – be they Moroccan or Senegalese – come closer to the fore, as in the track ‘Futa’, featuring the Wolof vocals of Abdoulaye Samb, but too often they drift into a piece only to drift out again. There are interesting sounds and combinations here – the mix of Baroque folk and Yazid Fentazi’s Algerian oud on ‘Marrakech Sunset’, for example – but they don’t quite reach the mark on every occasion.