Tinariwen in concert at the Ambition Festival, Fairfield Hall Croydon UK 2015-07-23 (all but last few seconds) aud master

Skytronics mic/MZ-RH1 Hi-MD/USB/Sonic Stage to i-Stream recorder (44.1k/16bit wav)/adobe audition cc>phase correction>Tracks>fades>Flac

SBE check/Checksum files done in Traders Little Helper

Recorded from front row almost dead centre

"Tinariwen the original Nomadic desert blues-rockers perform as part of Ambition Festival at Fairfield Halls. From the World Cup opening ceremony to the stage of the Grammy Awards and support slots for the Rolling Stones these Taurag former guerilla fighters have reached far beyond their Malian homeland in the Sahara to build a global following for their music.

So powerful are their hypnotic, lonesome songs that their meaning is understood across the world regardless of the language barrier between them and their legions of devotees. Their global journey was further emphasised as this phenomenal band recorded their 2014 album, Emmaar, in the deserts of California�s Joshua Tree National Park.

The great Malian �desert blues� band has always been politically driven as they tell their stories of nomadic life in the Sahara. This concert celebrates Hay�s twin town of Timbuktu, once Tinariwen�s home city. The band have been in exile since 2013 and recorded their latest albums Emmaar and Inside/Outside in the Joshua Tree desert in California.

I recorded this on both Hi-MD, which is the recording you have here, and on my now very sick D7 DAT. The Hi-MD story first - because I started recording too early, I missed that last few seconds of the encore. When transferring the recording via USB to Sony SonicStage for conversion to wav as usual, at 72% an error message appeared that the file is corrupt, which I had never seen before - panic stations - see below! I tagged on a little applause after the recording stopped with a fade starting just before.

Moving to the DAT recording on which I recorded both the support King Size Slim and Tinariwen, really to test the bokofessional mics I wired and taped up last weekend, which I velcroed (??) to a hat for the first time. The D7 would both record and play back, but not rewind or fast forward - so I had to manually rewind the DAT tapes which is a particularly arm aching procedure! When I got home and tried to hear the DAT recording, although it was playing, there was no audio output and no movement on the level meter! Double panic stations.

Fortunately I have now had a very kind offer from a regular uploader to see if the tape can be read by one of his DAT machines. Watch this space.........