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Review
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Afropop.org, Review >>
English guitarist Justin Adams grew up in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, so his feel for desert culture runs deep. He's also been spending the summer of 2002 standing in Jimmy Page's shoes--i.e. as Robert Plant's guitar player--so he's no slouch when it comes to blues and rock either. Adams played for years in Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, and has worked with artists as diverse as Sinead O'Connor and Brian Eno, Natacha Atlas and Billy Bragg. He's also produced albums for the French world music band LoJo, and notably, the most interesting act to emerge from northern Mali in many years, Tinariwen.
Desert Blues is a set of twelve, vivid, mostly brief musical sketches Adams created on his own, playing guitars, percussion, and Malian ngoni. What these textural, evocative works necessarily lack in band chemistry they make up for in their beautifully realized, singular mood of desert exploration. "Blue Man" contrasts plinking ngoni with wailing electric guitar to arrive at a kind of Tuareg rock 'n roll that is completely of a piece with the electric music blasting at urban desert parties in Timbuktu these days. "Desert Road" is a trancey, clopping groove with pretty electric and acoustic guitars conversing. "Out of the Woods" juxtoposes Ali Farka Touré-like Sonrai guitar and calabash with shimering slide guitar and organ.
Adams is a soulful and verstaile guitar player with a great feel for a huge vocabulary of acoustic and electric sound textures. He doesn't show off with fancy riffs or over-the-top soloing; his forte is in creating hypnotic grooves and sailing over them with a shimmering, clean slide sound ("Out of the Woods") or a searingly distorted electric melody ("Hummingbird").
Adams sings on a few tracks, mostly in a bass whisper or a Tom Waits like growl, evoking the sense of old blues singers more as a sound element than a traditional lead vocal. One of the more elaborated tunes, "Majnoun and Leila," opens with Nigerian juju-like percussion that shifts towards an animated, afrobeat chug as a vehicle for some of that clean electric slide playing. The tune shifts to a North African rhythm half way through, with derbouka percussion and a unison bass and guitar melody. The closer, "First Star," begins with the lyrical lilt of a cowboy song. And why not? Justin Adams is dreaming the desert here with remarkable clarity and conviction. He needn't be bound by any known geography.
Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org 07/09/02 >> go there
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