Justin Adams - Ribbons

The Guardian 60

(Wayward)

British guitarist Adams is a man of many parts. Alongside his job in Robert Plant’s Band of Joy have come collaborations with assorted North African and Middle Eastern luminaries – desert rockers Tinariwen and Terakaft, Moroccan Gnawa musician Hamid el Kasri and more. Here, he teams up with Norwegian singer Anneli Drecker (of Röyksopp) for an ambient outing that draws inspiration from modernist painters such as Rauschenberg and Pollock. Adams’s grooves and loops often carry Saharan flavours, while Drecker’s wordless, ethereal vocals evoke the emptiness of the Arctic north, with a touch of Tuvan throat-singing on Lightshaft. A seamless fusion that casts a low-key but binding spell.