[5] The album was recorded during a three-week session in the rocky desert near Djanet, a town on the southern rim of the Tassili n'Ajjer plateau, in south-eastern Algeria.

The plateau served as an alternate location to record the album after Tessalit, the band's home town in northern Mali, proved to be too precarious due to renewed conflict.

"Tinariwen, in addition to largely substituting both acoustic guitars and unamplified percussion for their usual electric guitars (reflecting their return to an older way of life),[4][6] also had hundreds of pounds of recording equipment and other gear transported to a canyon deep in the desert (running off a generator placed far enough from the microphones in the main tent to prevent noise pollution).

[2] Gregory Davis and Roger Lewis of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, with arrangement by Ian Brennan, contributed to the fourth track "Ya Messinagh".

[5] Note: A two-disc special edition of the album includes a bonus disc with the tracks "Djegh Ishilan", "El Huria Telitwar", "Kud Edazamin", and "Nak Ezzaragh Tinariwen".