The new album from Terakaft presents the Tamasheq band in live performance, with a lean tightness to the sound that leaves the group positioned between the desert blues genre and rock. A song like "Aman Wi Kawalnen" has the suppleness of the best Sahara bands, but the flow of lead guitar work that characterizes rock. Even where acoustic guitar dominates, as with "Aratan N Azawad," that same feel is there. In part that's because the band is only a three-piece (two guitars, bass, and vocals, supplemented for the recording with percussion and some additional guitar), offering a sparer, cleaner sound. There's a liquid beauty to the music with its easy, rolling rhythms, but the intensity always simmers, occasionally firing into flame, as with the biting, incisive guitar breaks in "Ahabib." It's no longer fair to call Terakaft an up-and-coming band. On this basis of this, they've arrived, with their sound fully developed.