Justin Adams - Musician / Composer / Producer profile picture

Justin Adams - Musician / Composer / Producer

'Soul Science' album out now!

About Me


Check out the latest edition of the Songlines Interactive sampler out now.

Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara album 'Soul Science' is in all good record shops now, including online at IRL shop now. The first 50 orders will be signed by Justin.

Itunes account holders can purchase the album digitially from Itunes

Soul Science has been nominated for the best album in the Culture Crossing category for the BBC World Music Awards .

Justin’s new release, with Gambian Griot, Juldeh Camara, is already attracting a lot of attention at media, since they supported Tinariwen at The Barbican earlier in the year. Soul Science is the result of a meeting of two worlds , an Afro-Blues shakedown.After a few years of collaborations with Robert Plant and Tinariwen, Juldeh's sound seemed like a perfect match for Justin's guitar and production. An African Master Musician who played in the fields for farmers as a child, Juldeh has the drive and effortless flow of a great Bluesman. And while his instrument brings to mind Delta players like Big Joe Williams, as well as Ali Farka, there is a lilt in his playing that hints at the ancient links between North Africa and the Celtic World.Soul Science is far from a purist piece , it has gritty rock and groove throughout. It uses the ancient Soul Sciences of scale and Rhythm to create a 21st Century Afro Blues.

Justin Adams co-wrote The Robert Plant album "Mighty Rearranger" released in 2005 to rave reviews. He has played guitar with Robert's band the Strange Sensation around the world, gaining an awesome live reputation. 2007 sees the release of Tinariwen's third album "Aman Iman" which is already established as an album of the year, produced by Adams.

His distinctive style came to prominence in 1990 with Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart. Since then he has worked with Sinead O'Connor, Tinariwen, Natacha Atlas, Damien Dempsey,and LO'JO, as well as releasing his own "Desert Road" album. He has composed two feature film soundtracks, and was instrumental in setting up the legendary Festival of the Desert. He produced Tinariwen's debut "the Radio Tisdas Sessions", and first collaborated with Robert Plant on 2002's Grammy nominated "Dreamland "album.

What reviewers are saying about "Soul Science":
"...a real landmark in African flavoured blues...it just feels right" fRoots
“Unquestionably the cross-cultural album of the year” – Independent on Sunday
“…raw and gutsy” – The Telegraph
“…this is no dry experiment but music played with real soul” - The Sun 4****
“…pounding percussion and driving guitar with equally stirring and virtuoso fiddle solos and rousing vocals” – The Guardian 4****
“An album to make the word fusion respectable again” – The Evening Standard 4****
“…Camara’s obsessive fiddling and Adams’ wide guitar shapes worked a treat…” – Financial Times 4****
“ …it is difficult not to imagine Bo (Diddley) himself playing "Ya Ta Kaya" or "Sanakubay" on some 1950’s package tour” – The Times 4****
"...this is an exceptional effort" - Songlines 5*****
"Admirers of Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure should find this irrestible" - Uncut 4****
Quotes from Robert Plant and The Strange Sensations' 'Mighty Rearranger' album.

"the impressive skills of guitarist Justin Adams dominate most tracks, his intuitive playing is full of eastern promise" CLASH

"a shimmering stew of sounds that's part heavy rock, part heavy Mali, with Justin Adams playing what looks like a giant leaf (a gimbri). " MOJO LIVE REVIEW

"Plant's best showing since Physical Graffitti" OBSERVER

Quotes from Justin’s highly critically acclaimed debut solo album ‘Desert Road’.

"a masterpiece" – fROOTS

"…a breathtakingly intense and expressionistic vision" – SONGLINES

".. spidery psyche-out improv acid guitars and layers of entrancing acoustics.." 'Pick of the Month' - GUITAR MAGAZINE

"Desert Road is a classic late night listen"- fROOTS

"..powerful and restless...grainy and haunted" - Q Magazine

"..a moody, evocative blend of Anglo-Arabic blues" - GUARDIAN

Quotes from Tinariwen’s Aman Iman album:-

"Producer Justin Adams captures Tinariwen in the raw – minimalist collective playing" – UNCUT

"This third album is by some distance the best showcase of their desert blues, thanks, in part to the sonic clarity of producer Justin Adams" – OBSERVER

"As producer, Adams has captured brilliantly Tinariwen's characteristic blend of loping camel-gait rhythms...and desert guitar lines" - INDEPENDENT

"Justin Adams has wisely kept the band sound as live, and exhilarating, as the were in that Bamako rehearsal room" - GUARDIAN

Screen Credits

Beautiful People – film score co-writer

When The Red Wind Blows – film score co-writer

The Kitchen Child – film score writer

Hackney Downs – film Score writer

3 Ways To Go – film score writer

Numerous ID’s & themes for BBC, MTV, Channel 4 and ITV


Both Desert Road and KIN are available to buy from www.irl.org.uk

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 2/6/2007
Band Website: irl.org.uk/justinadams.htm
Band Members: Festival In The Desert - Various Artists


Terakaft - Akh issudar


Influences:

Video shot by Tom Swindell www.youtube.com/tomswindell
Sounds Like:

CONGRATULATIONS JUSTIN AND JULDEH - WINNERS OF BBC RADIO 3 WORLD MUSIC AWARD "CULTURE CROSSING" CATEGORY.

You can view highlights from the Awards ceremony held in London last week on The BBC WEBSITE
Justin and Juldeh are featured in the Nominees videos and again on the Awards Highlights video accepting their award.
Catch Justin and Juldeh on the Africa Channel on April 27th, filmed live at Momo's. The Africa Channel broadcasts on Sky channel 281 at 9PM.
Charlie Gillett chose "Soul Science" as his album of the month in December 2007. Read his thoughts on the album HERE
Listen to Justin and Juldeh in session on Charles Hazlewood's BBC Radio 2 show first broadcast on December 12, 2007. Click HERE to listen.
FROM THE INDEPENDENT - JAN. 4, 2008Soul Science: True blues of a griot's song A West African praise singer and an English guitarist have combined forces to make a deeply joyful album

By Tim Cumming Published: 04 January 2008 The ritti has a big, big sound for a little instrument. The west African ancestor of the violin, its equivalents can be found in the Arabian rababa, the Touareg imzad, even as far away as central Asia. Possessed of a fluid and emotive voice of such range and shape-shifting flexibility, it's hard to believe that it's all summoned up on one string.It is a ceremonial instrument, and a hypnotic tool used for trance as much as to mark births, marriages, deaths, harvests. One of its most adept players is a griot (a singer and storyteller) from Bakau, in Gambia. Juldeh Camara now lives in Birmingham, but was first recorded by Bill Laswell back in 1990 for his Ancient Heart compilation. From the age of five to 15, he was apprentice to his blind father, Serif, a griot from the nomadic Fulani tribe.Though father and son have never recorded together, when Camara came of age they toured west African villages in a horse and buggy. "When I go back, his ritti is still there and he is still my father and he will play me songs I don't know. We play a lot together." He smiles. "A very good combination."I meet Camara in London, where he and British guitarist Justin Adams – best known for his work with Robert Plant and as the producer of Tinariwen's albums – have been recording a radio session for the BBC.Their album, Soul Science – which has just been nominated for the 2008 Radio 3 Awards for World Music in the Culture Crossing category – features what must be some of the most exciting guitar of Adams's career. Combined with Camara's rich instrumental vocalising on the ritti, and the north African percussion of one-time Jah Wobble accomplice, Dawson Miller, it's a thrilling marriage of Western and African sensibilities. And rather than spraying on the studio sheen that once bedevilled many African releases, it has a real down-home feel to it.The two players met via Adams's solo album, Desert Road – "the fruit of years of listening to Algerian, Moroccan, and Malian music". Adams is a superb rock guitarist, but one for whom the sensibilities of north and west African music have become increasingly dominant. "I'd begun to learn about west African rhythms, and wondered, where is that in the blues? When a rock player touches the blues he irons out the Africanness – the way Status Quo play 'Rockin' All Over the World', they turn it into something like morris dancing. The source is all about syncopation and call and response, and the further you get from its source, the less it's there."With Desert Road, Adams began tapping those sources, and it was via fellow English musician Duncan Noble, who gave Camara a tape of the album, that the two came to work together. "When I first heard it, I said, 'who is this African? Where is he from?'," remembers Camara. "He plays in the same Malian pentatonic key that I play in, and in the Arabic style, and it was very good."Camara is a remarkably diverse musician, a master of the Malian kora, whose repertoire no other Gambian player would know; he performs with English ceilidh band Boka Halat, and his music has been used in the National Theatre's production of Elmina's Kitchen and more recently at the Globe with We the People, the story of how the African music travelled to America with the slave trade.That historical passage, like the single string of the ritti, is one that vibrates at the heart of Soul Science's deep, joyful griot blues. "People don't talk about the blues in Africa," explains Camara. "But what I play has become the blues. I am a griot, I was born with it, and I have many songs that sound like reggae, and I find blues there, and rock." I can just play with it as we did with Robert last week."He's referring to an impromptu gig with Robert Plant at Birmingham Town Hall. "We'd done a 20-minute rehearsal," remembers Adams, "and it was so enjoyable and natural." The same spirit infected the making of the album. "Five tracks were recorded in one day, live," he saysSoul Science fuses the Western blues forms we know so well with their African sources, Camara's griot songs are infused with a sense of identity that sets the source music a world away from its international offspring.'Soul Science' is out now on Wayward Records
Record Label: Wayward Records
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara Album

The stunning new album is available for download from Itunes now.  The physical release will be available in all good record shops and online from 1st October.  The first 100 orders fr...
Posted by Justin Adams - Musician / Composer / Producer on Mon, 24 Sep 2007 01:57:00 PST

Justin Adams Albums Available

Both 'Desert Road' and 'Kin' are available from the shop from www.irl.org.uk
Posted by Justin Adams - Musician / Composer / Producer on Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:33:00 PST