Justin Adams and Mauro Durante: Still Moving review – a bravura performance

Aside from being first lieutenant in Robert Plant’s band, the Sensational Space Shifters, guitarist Justin Adams boasts a notable history producing luminaries like Malian group Tinariwen, Gambia’s Juldeh Camara and, most recently, Puglian ensemble CGS (Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino). Hence this sparky duet with CGS singer, violinist and percussionist Mauro Durante.

Recorded straight to tape with no overdubs, Still Moving proves a thrilling, spontaneous affair, switching between the laments and love songs of southern Italy and the gritty blues of North Africa and North America. Adams is an astonishing player, able to summon a mood of angst with a few reverberating chords of desert blues before a jolt into John Lee Hooker boogie, as he does on opener Dark Road Down, where the two men raise voices against a war-torn world of “trouble and pain”. Durante delivers an aching version of Amara Terra Mia, a big Italian hit, a paean to an elemental world of night sky and olive groves. Still Moving describes a Mediterranean sea trek, with days of rowing to an inhospitable shore; half Homer, half modern migrant. There’s a blazing rock-out on Calling Up, and, somewhat oddly, a version of Little Moses from the Carter Family’s country Bible. A bravura performance.