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Justin Adams
Justin Adams
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Key Information

Justin Alexander Adams (born 22 July 1961)[2] is an English guitarist and composer who works in blues and African styles.

Biography

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Born in London, the son of a diplomat, Adams spent some of his early childhood growing up in Egypt, before returning with his family to England.[3]

He began his career in music in the 1980s with the band the Impossible Dreamers. He then joined Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart.[4]

His first solo album was Desert Road in 2001, and he also wrote the score for Elaine Proctor's 2000 film Kin.

Adams co-wrote the 2005 Robert Plant album Mighty ReArranger, and is a producer. He has worked with Saharan desert blues group Tinariwen, whose first and third albums he produced, Robert Plant's Strange Sensation band, and has collaborated with Brian Eno, Sinéad O'Connor, Lo'Jo and musicians from African, Arabic and Irish traditions.[3][4][5][6][7]

From 2007, he collaborated with Gambian griot Juldeh Camara (sometimes under the name 'JUJU'), resulting in the albums Soul Science, Tell No Lies (which won a Songlines 'Cross-Cultural Collaboration' award),[8] The Trance Sessions, and In Trance. He also recorded with Ben Mandelson and Lu Edmonds as Les Triaboliques, releasing the album rivermudtwilight (2009). He produced the 2013 Zoom album of Rachid Taha.[citation needed]

In 2014, he performed with Robert Plant at Glastonbury Festival.[9]

Personal life

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Adams and his wife have two children.[9]

Discography

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  • Desert Road (2001), Wayward
  • Kin: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2001), Wayward
  • Soul Science (2007), Wayward - Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara
  • Tell No Lies (2009), Real World - Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara
  • rivermudtwilight (2009), World Village - Les Triaboliques
  • The Trance Sessions (2010), Real World - Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara
  • In Trance (2011), Real World - JUJU
  • Ribbons (2017), Wayward/DJA Records - Justin Adams & Anneli Drecker
  • Still Moving (2021), Rough Trade - Justin Adams & Mauro Durante
  • Sweet Release (2024), Ponderosa Music & Art - Justin Adams & Mauro Durante

References

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia
from Grokipedia
Justin Adams is an English , , and renowned for blending , African rhythms, and influences in his work. Emerging from London's post-punk scene in the early , he has become a pivotal figure in cross-cultural music collaborations, producing and performing with artists across genres and continents. His career highlights include Grammy-nominated albums with —both with the Strange Sensation and later the Sensational Space Shifters—and landmark recordings that fuse Western rock with North African and Malian traditions. Raised in the due to his father's diplomatic role, Adams was immersed in and African sounds from a young age, playing Egyptian drums and absorbing diverse musical cultures in and . He later attended Eton but distanced himself from the British establishment, channeling his experiences into music that prioritizes spontaneity over rehearsed sets. Adams gained early recognition in the late as a key member of Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, co-writing three albums including the Mercury Prize-nominated Rising Above Bedlam. Throughout the and , Adams expanded his collaborations, recording three influential Afro-blues albums with Gambian Juldeh Camara and producing for Malian desert blues band , including their debut The Radio Tisdas Sessions. He joined Robert Plant's Strange Sensation in 2001, contributing to albums like and earning Grammy nominations, and continued the partnership in the Sensational Space Shifters from 2012, releasing top-ten albums such as Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar (2014) and (2017). He has worked with artists such as , , and Lo'Jo. As a solo artist, his releases include Desert Road (2000), hailed as a by fRoots magazine, Ribbons (2018), and the soundtrack Burning Men (2019), alongside ongoing duo performances with Mauro Durante following Still Moving (2021), including tours in 2024 and 2025. Adams's philosophy of embracing opportunities has led to productions for emerging acts like Moroccan band Hoba Hoba Spirit and ongoing British Council-supported initiatives promoting global musical exchange.

Early life

Childhood and family background

Justin Adams was born on 22 July 1961 in Westminster, , . His father worked as a British , which resulted in the family relocating abroad during much of Adams' childhood in the and . The family first spent time in shortly after his birth, before moving to toward the end of the and subsequently to in the . In , Adams was immersed in a vibrant cultural milieu, where the household environment and local radio broadcasts exposed him to Middle Eastern and North African musical traditions, including the songs of iconic singers like . Adams returned to during his adolescence, navigating the challenges of readjusting to British society after years immersed in Middle Eastern life. This period of transition coincided with the emergence of punk and scenes in the UK, marking a stark contrast to the sounds of his formative years abroad. The experiences in profoundly shaped his later musical style, blending Western and Eastern influences.

Early musical influences

During his childhood in , where his family resided due to his father's diplomatic post, Justin Adams discovered Lebanese singer and other Arab music through his parents' record collection. This exposure introduced him to melodic structures and vocal styles that would later inform his guitar playing. He also engaged directly with local sounds, purchasing Egyptian drums and experimenting with rhythms alongside his brother. Local Egyptian radio broadcasts further shaped his early sensibilities, broadcasting traditional and popular North African rhythms that blended with the , the Muslim , and songs accompanying belly dancers. These auditory experiences, heard during his time there around ages 12 to 13, instilled a deep appreciation for rhythmic complexity and cultural fusion. Upon returning to in his teenage years, Adams developed a fascination with blues, rock, and , drawing inspiration from artists such as , whose innovative guitar techniques resonated with his emerging interests. He also encountered the raw, hypnotic styles of Malian guitarist , which echoed the elements he had absorbed earlier. At around age 13, while attending Eton, Adams persuaded his parents to buy him a guitar and began self-taught experiments, merging Western rock riffs with Eastern scales and Arab modalities to create a personal hybrid sound.

Musical career

Early bands and breakthrough

Adams began his professional music career in the mid-1980s as a in the and new wave band The Impossible Dreamers, formed by a group of friends including Caroline Radcliffe, , and while attending the . The quartet gained initial traction in London's scene, achieving a club hit with the B-side "Spin" from their debut 12-inch single and subsequently signing with . They supported prominent acts such as , , and during live performances, honing Adams' guitar style amid the burgeoning indie label era. The band remained active until the late 1980s, providing Adams with foundational experience in experimental and fusion-oriented sounds. In the late 1980s, Adams transitioned to Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, where he contributed guitar to the band's evolving lineup, drawing on collaborations with figures like Mark P. and Charles Hayward of . His involvement marked a pivotal shift, as he helped shape the group's sound through recordings including the 1989 album The Unspoken Word, blending roots with dub rhythms and emerging world influences. Adams developed a distinctive guitar technique incorporating and African elements, which became integral to the band's experimental ethos. Adams' breakthrough came through Invaders of the Heart's dynamic live performances and studio work, which fused dub, , and rock to captivate audiences in the UK underground circuit. These efforts, including contributions to albums like The Unspoken Word (), elevated his profile as a versatile and innovator in cross-genre experimentation. By the early , this period had positioned Adams for broader recognition within the UK indie scene, establishing him as a key figure in the fusion of global and alternative sounds.

Key collaborations

Throughout the , Justin Adams formed a significant partnership with , serving as guitarist and co-writer for Plant's band Strange Sensation and later the Sensational Space Shifters. Adams contributed to the composition of Plant's album Mighty ReArranger, blending rock, blues, and influences drawn from their shared explorations of global sounds. The collaboration extended to extensive touring, including performances at major festivals like and the Pyramid Stage at WOMAD, where Adams' Middle Eastern-inspired guitar work complemented Plant's vocals to create a dynamic fusion style. Adams played a pivotal role in introducing to international audiences, acting as producer and occasional guitarist on their early albums. He co-produced their debut The Radio Tisdas Sessions (2001) alongside Lo'Jo, recording in the remote Malian town of using minimal equipment to capture the band's raw Saharan sound. Adams also produced and contributed guitar to their third album, Aman Iman: Water Is Life (2007), enhancing the group's hypnotic rhythms with subtle Western production techniques while preserving their Tuareg traditions. In the 1990s and 2000s, Adams engaged in diverse studio and live sessions with artists including Sinéad O'Connor, Brian Eno, and the French collective Lo'Jo. He toured and recorded with O'Connor, providing guitar on tracks like "This Is a Rebel Song" and integrating post-punk edges into her emotive performances. Collaborations with Eno often occurred through shared projects, such as cameos on Rachid Taha's Zoom (2013), where Adams' production highlighted ambient and experimental elements. With Lo'Jo, Adams produced three albums starting in the late 1990s, including Bohème de Cristal (2001), fostering a dreamlike fusion of gypsy jazz, African rhythms, and electronica in both studio recordings and live settings. Adams' partnership with Gambian Juldeh Camara under the moniker marked a in Afro-blues, with three influential albums: Skin Tones (1997), Desertion (2000), culminating in the 2007 album Soul Science, which merged Camara's riti and traditional vocals with Adams' grooves. The duo's innovative blend earned the World Music Award in 2008, underscoring their impact on and live energy.

Production and solo endeavors

Adams released his debut solo album, Desert Road, in 2000 on his own Wayward label, blending blues with North African and West African musical elements alongside electronic influences to create a genre-bending soundscape. The album marked his independent creative exploration, drawing from his experiences in Saharan music traditions. In his production work, Adams contributed to Rachid Taha's album Zoom in 2013, providing guitar arrangements and shaping its fusion of , rock, and electronic sounds with guests including Mick Jones and . He also produced Tinariwen's third studio album, Aman Iman: Water Is Life, released in 2007, capturing the band's hypnotic during a two-week recording session in , , while enhancing its live energy without overpolishing. This production built on his longstanding association with the group, as detailed in their collaborative history. During the 2000s, Adams formed the guitar trio Les Triaboliques with and Ben Mandelson, uniting their diverse backgrounds in punk, , and experimental styles to explore "dusk core" soundscapes. The group debuted with the album rivermudtwilight in 2009, emphasizing inventive instrumentation and global influences. Adams extended his compositional talents to film, scoring the soundtrack for Elaine Proctor's 2000 drama Kin, set in the Namibian desert, with the album Kin: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack released in 2001 on Wayward. The evocative guitar-driven pieces complemented the film's themes of isolation and survival. In 2017, Adams issued his solo album Ribbons, featuring vocalist Anneli Drecker, which delved into experimental guitar techniques through layered, textured ambient compositions blending global and electronic elements. The work highlighted his ongoing innovation in left-of-center production and performance.

Recent activities

In the early 2020s, Justin Adams deepened his partnership with Italian Durante, forming a duo that blended his prowess with Durante's , , and percussion rooted in southern Italian traditions. Their debut collaborative album, Still Moving, released in 2021, emerged as a direct response to the pandemic's constraints on travel and performance, embodying a sense of restless motion amid enforced stillness. Recorded live with no overdubs, the album fuses North African blues, Mediterranean laments, and hypnotic grooves, evoking themes of migration and . The duo expanded their sound on the follow-up album Sweet Release, issued in 2024 by Ponderosa Music Records, which further explores elemental spirits bridging ancient folk roots and modern through live recordings. The release achieved immediate acclaim, topping the Charts in December 2024 and earning designation as Best of in the Transglobal Chart for the 2024-2025 season. Adams and Durante translated their studio synergy to the stage with a series of high-profile live appearances in the mid-2020s. In October 2024, they headlined at the Musicport Festival in Whitby, UK, delivering a set that highlighted their fusion of global rhythms. Their ongoing tour schedule extended into 2025, encompassing North American dates—including a performance at The Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis on November 13, 2025—and European stops in Spain, France, Canada, and Croatia. These outings underscore the duo's evolving live dynamic, distinct from Adams' longstanding ties to Robert Plant's Sensational Space Shifters.

Personal life

Family and relationships

Justin Adams has maintained a high degree of regarding his family and relationships, with scant details available in or interviews about his or parental role. While he has alluded to having children who share his passion for , specific information on their involvement remains limited and undisclosed. This discretion aligns with his overall approach to separating professional endeavors from personal matters, avoiding media exposure for his loved ones.

Residence and lifestyle

Adams was long based in , where he established his career in the vibrant scene of the 1980s and maintained a studio for recording and production work. As of 2021, he was based in . This choice of home reflects the city's rich musical heritage and its role as a hub for diverse artistic collaborations, providing a stable base amid his otherwise itinerant professional life. His lifestyle revolves around balancing the demands of intensive global tours—often spanning continents with projects like the Sensational Space Shifters alongside —with extended periods of recovery and creative recharge at home. These home-based intervals allow him to decompress from the rigors of travel and performance, fostering a that sustains his prolific output in music and production. Beyond music, Adams pursues a deep interest in travel and cultural immersion, marked by repeated visits to —such as his journeys to for the Festival in the Desert and ongoing ties with West African traditions through partnerships like that with Gambian riti player Juldeh Camara—and to , including collaborative tours with Italian tamburello virtuoso Durante that explore Mediterranean trance sounds. He also engages in non-musical pursuits like reading, citing influences from authors such as in her memoir , Italo Calvino's , and Somerset Maugham's , which resonate with his explorations of art, history, and human experience.

Discography

Solo albums

Adams released his debut solo album, Desert Road, in 2001 on the Wayward label, blending influences with North African and West African rhythms alongside electronic and dub elements to create a hypnotic, evocative sound inspired by desert landscapes. The record features multi-tracked guitar riffs, beats, and vocals that evoke a "Moorish " style, marking his exploration of genre-bending instrumental compositions. In 2017, Adams issued Ribbons, an experimental album centered on layered, textured guitar work paired with vocal effects from guest artist , producing ambient soundscapes described as hypnotic and moody global fusions. Drawing inspiration from abstract painters like and , the release eschews traditional song structures for instrumental "sound paintings" that glide between electronic, folk, and world elements. Burning Men (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), released in 2019, is an album composed and performed by Adams for the film of the same name, featuring atmospheric guitar-driven soundscapes evoking tension and rural English landscapes. Still Moving, released in 2021, incorporates collaborative contributions from violinist and percussionist Durante while maintaining Adams' vision as the primary creative force, merging post-punk guitar with , African trance-blues, and Italian taranta traditions into mesmerizing folk-blues grooves. The album's hypnotic rhythms and genre-crossing arrangements reflect Adams' production style, honed through North African influences, resulting in a soul-stirring set of and vocal tracks. Adams' most recent solo-adjacent project, Sweet Release (2024), features elements from Mauro Durante but is framed within Adams' and production, exploring themes of freedom and redemption through trance-inducing rhythms that synthesize Southern Italian, North African, Middle Eastern, , and rock styles. Driven by pulses and soaring , the album conveys messages of peace via classic frameworks, building on the duo's prior chemistry to unearth elemental, half-hidden spirits in modern soundscapes.

Collaborative and production credits

Justin Adams has made significant contributions as a collaborator and producer across various and rock projects, often blending African rhythms with Western instrumentation. His work with JUJU, alongside Gambian musician Juldeh Camara, resulted in three acclaimed albums that fused , African percussion, and . Soul Science (2007), released on , featured Adams on guitar and production, earning praise for its innovative "Afro-blues" sound and winning the World Music Award for Best Collaboration. This was followed by Tell No Lies (2009), also on , where Adams co-produced and played guitar, incorporating ritti and ngoni alongside his electric leads to create a borderless musical landscape. The third album, (2011), captured live performances at , emphasizing ecstatic, trance-like rhythms from traditional music and . Adams' production role with the Malian Tuareg band marked a pivotal entry into Saharan rock, building on his earlier encounters with the group during recordings in the desert. He produced their debut international album The Radio Tisdas Sessions (2001), at a radio station in , , where he handled mixing and mastering to preserve the band's raw, hypnotic guitar grooves. Later, Adams produced Aman Iman: Water Is Life (2007) in , , enhancing the ensemble's with subtle overdubs while maintaining its live energy, which helped propel to global recognition. In rock circles, Adams served as guitarist and co-writer for Robert Plant's (2005), contributing to the album's fusion of Led Zeppelin-era riffs with influences as part of Plant's Strange Sensation band; the record peaked at No. 4 on the . Among his other notable credits, Adams produced Algerian raï-rock artist Rachid Taha's Zoom (2013) on Records, incorporating guest appearances by Mick Jones and while layering Taha's vocals over surf-inflected guitars and electronic elements. Additionally, as a founding member of the "distressed string band" Les Triaboliques alongside Ben Mandelson and , Adams contributed guitar and composition to their debut rivermudtwilight (2009), exploring experimental acoustic textures drawn from global folk traditions.

Awards and honors

Major awards

Justin Adams has received several notable accolades for his contributions to world music, particularly in fusion and cross-cultural projects. In 2010, Adams, collaborating with Juldeh Camara as part of the JUJU project, won the Songlines Music Award for Cross-Cultural Collaboration for their album Tell No Lies. He earned the Songlines Music Award for Best Fusion Artist in 2022 for the album Still Moving, a collaboration with Mauro Durante that blends Mediterranean trance blues elements. Adams's production work on Tinariwen's album Aman Iman (2007) garnered indirect recognition through the band's nomination for Album of the Year at the 2008 . His earlier production on Amassakoul (2004) contributed to Tinariwen's win in the category at the 2005 Awards for . In 2024-2025, Adams and Durante's album Sweet Release was selected as Best of in the Transglobal World Music Chart's year-end summary. For his work with and the Strange Sensation, Adams contributed to the album (2005), which received two Grammy Award nominations in 2006: Best Contemporary Album and Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Shine It All Around".

Chart performances and nominations

Adams' production contributions to Tinariwen's albums in the 2000s garnered nominations at the Awards for , particularly in recognition of his role in shaping their sound. The 2007 album Aman Iman, produced by Adams, received a nomination for Album of the Year in 2008, highlighting the blend of and global influences he helped craft. His work on Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation's (2005) earned widespread critical acclaim, with awarding it four stars for its eclectic fusion of rock, , and elements. In more recent commercial achievements, the collaborative album Sweet Release (2024) with Mauro Durante reached number one on the Transglobal World Music Chart in December 2024, reflecting strong European and global reception in the world music category. This success has fueled anticipation for Adams and Durante's 2025 North American and European tour, though broader chart metrics remain limited to album rankings.

References

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