Awek - It's Rollin' (2010)

In Toulouse, there is a new oddity on the up and up, a phenomenon which is much more pleasurable than the Capitole, aeronautical construction, rugby or cassoulet, the other local specialities. I mean the group Awek, who have become the talk of the town within the Blues microcosm, which was in serious need of a face-lift. With 5 albums and 10 years’ experience behind them, spreading the good word of the little blue note, Awek have acquired a strength and maturity worthy of their peers on the other side of the Atlantic. Their musical style is an explosive cocktail, a melting pot of groove and feelings, mingling classicism and originality, passion and soberness, orthodoxy and personal impressions…

Dressed up to the nines, like hoodlums from down-town Chicago, Fabulous Thunderbirds style, or die-hard Mafiosi, ready for a lead role in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, it’s a treat for the ear-drums and the brain-cells to see them on stage, with their sensitive blues always on target. Awek play an authentic blues, echoing the juke joints and smoky bars of Jackson, Mississippi. But at the same time, a personal and multicoloured blues, light-years away from dull facsimiles.

Understandably elected best blues group in 2004, the group work abroad now and have just got back from a tour in Quebec, where they were hailed as a real revelation. Their last opus, entitled “Just pick up the pieces”, is definitely the most accomplished and mature yet, coming close to the state of grace. You never emerge unscathed, when, one ebony black night, you cross the path of Awek and their tribal blues. ~Serge Sciboz