Justin Adams & Mauro Durante (UK/IT)

Justin Adams and Mauro Durante

Sweet Release is the second album from Justin Adams & Mauro Durante, following on from 2021’s award winning Still Moving.

3 years of worldwide touring have turned what was originally a fusion project into a fully realised and unique unit, drawing on Durante’s Taranta background, but with a palette that ranges from raw Rockabilly to Sufi ecstasy via Minimalism, exploring themes of musical healing and catharsis. With an almost telepathic level of interplay, the duo recorded the album live, allowing for magical improvised moments.

Justin Adams is a guitarist/producer whose distinctive sound carries the mark of his itinerant life - A childhood in the Middle East led to a lifelong passion for the sounds of the Islamic world, while his teenage UK years instilled a devotion to the raw energy of punk and the trance sounds of Dub. In recent years he has produced acclaimed albums by Fado singer Lina and French Algerian chanteuse Souad Massi, while his past collaborations with Robert Plant, Tinariwen, Rachid Taha, Sinead O’Connor, and West African Master Musician Juldeh Camara have been marked by emotional intensity and a ‘no borders’ approach.

Mauro Durante (violinist, percussionist and composer) is a visionary inheritor of the folk roots of his native Salento, in Italy's Puglia region. He leads the internationally acclaimed and award-winning Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (founded in 1975 by Durante's family), playing in all major world music festivals. Durante is considered as a key figure in reinventing pizzica music for today, making ‘Taranta’ the most vibrant and relevant form of Italian roots music. Mauro Durante toured the world for many years with Ludovico Einaudi, and has collaborated with Piers Faccini, Ibrahim Maalouf, Ballake Sissoko, Jovanotti, Stewart Copeland, Sam Lee, Enzo Avitabile, Nickodemus, Red Baraat, bringing a contemporary edge along with his deep feel for tradition.

‘Mauro Durante is a force of nature and culture’ – Il Manifesto

‘coupling Adams’s love of African and Arabic music, delta blues and old time country music and Durante’s interpretations of traditional Italian folk songs they have produced a brilliant set. Cut live with no overdubs. An album of pulsating and hypnotic rhythms. Mesmeric stuff’
- Morning Star 5*****

‘I met Justin Adams . I think that was a major turning point for me , to find a guy who could be so lyrical as a guitar player, and to have such amazingly beautiful roots of appreciation of music’ - Robert Plant, Uncut Magazine

‘The violinist Mauro Durante is probably the most exciting feature on Ludovico Einaudi’s world-conquering chill-out albums’ – The Times