Album Title: Sweet Release

Release Date: 18 October 2024

“Ancient frame drum and the soaring fiddle of Mauro Durante…mesh mesmerically with the raw, gutsy playing and occasional singing of Adams …to conjure hypnotic beauty”           

MOJO ****

“Adams’s guitar burns like a torch in the dead of night. Mauro’s singing channels ancestral voices. Thoroughly unpredictable and profoundly meditative.”

THE TIMES ****

‘Sweet Release’ is the second album from master musicians Justin Adams & Mauro Durante. Three years of worldwide touring has turned what was originally a fusion project into a fully realised and unique entity. Drawing on Durante’s Taranta background with Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, as well as his work with Ludovico Einaudi, and Adams’ prolific career as guitarist, with everyone from Sinéad O’Connor to Robert Plant and Tinariwen, their musical landscape ranges from raw Rockabilly to Sufi ecstasy via Minimalism. For this album they have brought in some guest vocalists adding yet more layers to their distinctive sound. Recorded live, ‘Sweet Release’ will be released on 18 October on Ponderosa Records with accompanying live dates including London, Bristol, Oxford, Sheffield and Swansea (full details below). The single ‘Ghost Train’ will also be released99 on 18 October.

Exploring themes of musical healing and catharsis, the title track and opener ‘Sweet Release’ is a heartfelt manifesto of the duo’s vision, featuring Adams’ unmistakeable touch on the guitar and Durante’s masterful tamburello frame drum. Along with original tracks such as the shimmering pizzica- based ‘Leuca’ featuring guest singer Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino’s Alessia Tondo and the wildly rocking ‘Ghost Train’ also the 2^nd single), they cover Lebanese Diva Fairuz’s haunting Easter Hymn ‘Wa Habibi’ with guest singer Yousra Mansour from Bab L’ Bluz, which becomes a timely meditation on suffering. CBGB’s underground legend Felice Rosser brings vocals to ‘Tide Keeps Turning’ adding a deeply soulful touch to the ritual Neapolitan Tammurriata beat of Durante’s drum. Adams’ starkly beautiful guitar illuminates ‘Aurora’, inspired by a dawn call to prayer heard in Rajasthan, while ‘Santu Paulu’ invokes the saint of Tarantism with hypnotic psychedelia. The anthemic Instrumental ‘Ithaca Return’ opens brightly before turning into a wild pizzica-like tune led by Durante’s rhapsodic violin. ‘Qui Non Vorrei Morire’, sung by Durante, is a setting of a poem by Vittorio Bodini, another native of Salento, originally recorded by Mauro’s late father Daniele, one of the leading lights of the Taranta revival.