Desert Road

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:41:57 -0600

Two meta-musical paths crossed when Justin Adams went to Mali. There he made the connection between the Arabic music that surrounded his youth (he lived in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt) and the Blues, Reggae, and Rock, all with origins in Africa. Suddenly, he knew why some music swings. After years of performing with Jah Wobble, Sinead O’Connor, Natacha Atlas, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Billy Bragg, and Robert Plant, Justin Adams finally released a solo album, and because of it has been hailed as “Britain’s answer to Ry Cooder” (The Guardian). Adams says of Desert Road, “After 20 years of recording music with various groups, singers and players I finally put out my own album. Six tracks were written and recorded at my flat in London in a two week period shortly after I had got back from an inspiring trip to Bamako, Mali. I then trawled through piles of musical sketches that I had been making over the past five years and found a series of pieces that seemed to make a coherent whole. Weird little scribbles I had made on a portastudio, never thinking anyone would hear them, now seemed in retrospect to point toward the sound I had arrived at with these new tracks. It was a sound I had in my head, with circular rhythms, like Moroccan trance, that awesome sense of abandon that you hear in the old Blues singers as well as a Cairo muezzin chanting from a minaret, and the atmosphere, mystery and sound shaping of the most trippy dub.”

New Music From Justin Adams on Calabash Music

Desert Road