Omar Moctar (bka Bombino) hails from Niger and records music in Tamasheq, the native language of his small hometown of Agadez. In order to record his forthcoming album, Azel, Bombino traveled to Woodstock, NY to work alongside the Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth. It’s worth noting that his last full-length Nomad was produced by Dan Auerback. Longstreth discussed the first time he heard Bombino’s music in a press release:

Back in 2009, somebody gave me a dusty old iPod with a bunch of music from somebody called Omara Bombino Moctar on it. It was an amazing collection of songs, half of them electric and the other acoustic, like Zep III and Bringing It All Back Home. The electric parts were so ecstatically ragged and feverishly modal that it felt like an exorcism; the guitar amp sounded like a blown-out Peavey cab that somebody had knifed. The acoustic parts were so delicately reflective and luminescent that they felt like stargazing. I was intrigued by this range, and more than that, I was intrigued by what this guitar seemed to be saying. The tone, alternately strident and melancholic, poetic and acrobatic and sometimes almost witty, was suffused with a point of view: longing and hope in a tug-of-war.

The album’s debut single is titled “Inar,” and it’s a stunning, evocative piece of expertly-tailored acoustic music. Listen below.

Azel is out 4/1 via Partisan.