Justin Adams: Guitarist & Producer
His production on landmark albums by Tinariwen and Rachid Taha highlight his feel for North African groove, while his award-winning collaborations with Gambian maestro Juldeh Camara linked griot tradition with raw blues spirit. His early work with artists such as Jah Wobble, Sinead O’Connor and Natacha Atlas was infused with the spirit of post-punk London, while his recent solo album of guitar atmospherics Ribbons was cited by Songlines magazine as amongst the top 50 albums of the past decade.
In the early ’80s Justin Adams played in various post-punk bands in London at the time of the birth of the independent record labels.
His bands, such as The Impossible Dreamers, supported groups like Aswad, Kid Creole and the Coconuts and even Curtis Mayfield.
He collaborated with figures such as Mark P. and Charles Hayward of This Heat, eventually joining ex-PiL bassist Jah Wobble’s band Invaders of the Heart. In this band, he developed a style of playing guitar which incorporated elements of Arabic and African styles with a post-punk/dub approach. Together they recorded three albums and worked with an array of great singers and players such as Natacha Atlas and Jaki Liebezeit from Can on the 1994 album “Take Me to God”.
He started to produce for other artists, notably French band Lo’Jo, whose album Mojo radio was released in 1998.
A trip to Mali with Lo'Jo while working on their next album “Boheme de Cristal“ was to prove seminal. Adams and Lo’Jo met Tuareg musicians from the North of Mali, a meeting which resulted in the 2000/2001 recording of Tinariwen’s debut album “The Radio Tisdas Sessions“, released on Adams’ Wayward label and the legendary first Festival of the Desert.
That first trip to Mali saw Adams buying a ngoni- a Tuareg 3 string lute, which provided the original impetus for his 2000 solo album Desert Road, described by FRoots magazine as “a masterpiece”. Shortly after its release, Adams was contacted by Robert Plant, searching for a guitarist for his new band. The Strange Sensation, featuring ex-members of Portishead, Massive Attack and Cast, went on to make two Grammy-nominated albums and to tour the world. Adams returned to the Festival of the Desert with Robert Plant in 2003 the performance captured on what Charlie Gillett called “perhaps the best live album of all time“.
While Plant headed to America to work with Alison Krauss, Adams recorded three albums with Gambian master musician Juldeh Camara, recognised as landmarks in Afro- Blues, and produced what is often considered the definitive Tuareg guitar album, Tinariwen’s “Aman Iman”. He collaborated in one-off Festival performances with some of the greatest artists in Morocco, Rouicha, Hamid El Kasri and Nejet Attabou and produced and co-wrote a classic album with Algerian maverick Rachid Taha. Other productions include Terakaft and Hoba Hoba Spirit, while he recorded and performed with “dusk core” trio Les Triaboliques with Ben Mandelson and Lu Edmonds.
