Mdou Moctar and his three-piece band eased into their opening song Friday at the Cooperage, offering instructions to the sound mixer as they gradually ramped up the sound. Satisfied, they offered a set of face-melting sheets of sound broken only by Moctar’s keening vocals. Dressed in long robes and tagelmust turbans the Tuareg band headlined Milwaukee Psych Fest’s warm-up show with a largely instrumental set of music that built on tension and dynamics, rising and falling only to begin again.
The Niger native taught himself to play on a homemade guitar and his inventive songs rely on long stretches where bass, drums and second guitar set a rhythmic underpinning that allows Moctar to weave sinewy riffs and spiderweb scales.
Moctar’s music has progressed from his 2008 debut which was capture by Saharan cellphone recordings and his reinterpretation of Prince’s “Purple Rain” called “Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai” (“Rain The Color Of Blue With A Little Red In It.”)
With both guitarists wielding Fender Stratocasters plugged onto Roland Jazz Chorus Amplifiers the sound often recalled bagpipes or horn lines. The Tuareg band Tinariwen may be the recent touchstone for this music, but the trance and groove sound is also a not too distant cousin of R. L. Burnside’s north Mississippi hill country blues or even John Lee Hooker’s idiosyncratic one chord stomp.
Accompanied by a morphing light show, the southpaw Moctar’s guitar solos spun arabesque dervishes into liquid riffs and fireflies of sound. Like the hypnotic jams of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the vocals and music built to a mesmerizing frenzy poised for takeoff.
