Josh Klinghoffer joins Malian rockers Tinariwen for new album

Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer has teamed up with African rockers Tinariwen for two unlikely collaborations, despite struggling to communicate due to language barriers.

The Tuareg bandmembers relocated to a house in the Californian desert to record the follow up to 2011's Tassili due to the ongoing political unrest in Tinariwen's native Mali, and they ended up being joined for jam sessions by singer Saul Williams, Zwan guitarist Matt Sweeney and Klinghoffer.

And the By The Way hitmaker reveals they relied on music as their main form of communication because they had no other way to really speak to one another.

He explains to RollingStone.com, "We would just be sitting around with guitars and start a song. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know the song, I didn't know if they knew the song. They would just kind of nod their head and I'd play along...

"There was one song where Eyadou (Ag Leche, bassist) wanted me to do some spacey, guitar-y kinda stuff that he saw me do live with the Chili Peppers. But I didn't bring any guitar effects, so I kind of just tried to work with what I had - which was nothing, which was just a guitar.

"Some of us never even said a word to each other, we just kind of nodded politely and smiled. I just wish to God that I had more of a way to communicate with Ibrahim (Ag Alhabib, lead guitarist) and Abdallah (Ag Alhousseyni, acoustic guitarist), because they don't speak English much and I don't speak any French. I wish I could have communicated more but, without sounding like a hippie twat, we played guitars and we smiled and that was enough. I think something was communicated."

The music sessions resulted in the tracks Toumast Tincha and Timadrit in Sahara, which both feature on Tinariwen's upcoming album, Emmaar.