Sweet Release opens up a landscape of redemption by riding the rails of a classic blues, the title track talking of messages of peace and songs of sweet release, wrapping itself around a typically lean and potent riff conjured by guitarist Justin Adams.
On this sweet release, he’s reunited with singer, tamburello frame drummer and violinist Mauro Durante, leader of the potent southern Italian band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, a band renowned for the furious, transformative music of Pizzica Tarantata, which in folklore has the power to cure the bite of the legendary Taranta through music, trance and dance.
Adams’ guitar has graced many a stage with Robert Plant, as well as with desert blues legends Tinariwen, and combining his brilliant stringwork with Durante’s rich, gritty voice and instrumental finesse fuels an album that builds on their debut, 2021’s Still Moving.
Here, they are joined by a number of guest vocalists; the second track “Leuca” features Canzoniere’s singer Alessia Tondo, while Lebanese diva Fairuz’s Good Friday hymn, “Wa Habibi”, is taken by Yousra Mansour from Bab L' Bluz, and CBGB’s-era New York underground legend Felice Rosser shares vocals with Adams on “Tide Keeps Turning”. “Wa Habibi” is the album’s sweet spot, its mysterious deeps illuminated by Adams’ minimal, atmospheric guitar backing, Durante’s keening violin and Mansour’s graceful voice. Similarly, “Aurora”, whose music could light up the dark like an Aurora Borealis, binds Adams’ most atmospheric, minimal playing with Durante’s violin drone, their playing inspired by a dawn call to prayer heard in Rajasthan.
“Ithaca Return” is another album hot spot, a propulsive instrumental of chunky riffing and soaring violin, the combo delivering a powerful shot of sweet release that you can foresee lighting up and burning up the stages they’ll be playing later this month – beginning on 2 October at Brixton’s Hootenanny in south London, and concluding in Swansea. They’re small stages, fortified to accommodate big songs and bigger riffs, Taranta rhythms and this duo’s shimmering ambient poetry of sound. Sweet release, indeed.
