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Justin Adams and Mauro Durante have found their Sweet Release
In late October 2024, George De Stefano interviewed Justin Adams and Mauro Durante about their new album, Sweet Release. Adams provided all the responses except the last one. George De Stefano: As good as Still Moving was, this album is even more impressive. Do you think your performing live together in the past couple of years had anything to do with that? Justin Adams: We made Still Moving having never toured together as a duo, so it made a huge difference that we’ve had the experience of years of performing together in all sorts of conditions. We feel like we have become a unit, a combination of our musical personalities.What does “Sweet Release” mean to you? And can music provide it? JA: As I get older it seems more and more clear that the function of music is to make us feel connected and to lift our spirits. When I think of all the human energy spent on what feels like necessary survival , the moment where we can lose ourselves in music can give us a taste of a different reality.The new album expands on the blues-meets-taranta of Still Moving. There’s “Wa Habibi,” for example. Did you both decide to expand the musical parameters for this record? JA: I think Still Moving had a broader palette than blues-meets-taranta already. Neither Mauro nor I feel at all constricted about genre. The important thing is to play from the heart and to make an emotional connection. “Wa Habibi” is a song that comes from a shared Arab/European heritage and is a beautiful lament that seemed to us appropriate for our times.Was Sweet Release recorded live in the studio? Were there overdubs, or are we hearing just the two of you playing in real time? JA: It’s basically recorded live, although Alessia (Tondo) and Felice (Rosser) added their parts later, and sometimes, we add our vocals to an instrumental track to get a better sound. We find it works better not to add any extra overdubs; it achieves more space and a natural dynamic.I’m curious about your creative and collaborative process. How do the two of you decide on the material, how to arrange and play it? JA: We normally start with a rhythm or a riff from one of us, then the other responds, lyrics come later. A duo is very practical. One suggests an idea, we try it and then for us to keep it, we need to both agree that it works. It’s actually easier than working solo (when you are sometimes not sure of your own ideas) and working in three or more, where it’s not always easy to find common ground.The singer, songwriter, and bass player Felice Rosser appears on one track, “Tide Keeps Turning.” How did she become part of this project? JA: An old friend of mine, Malu Halasa, always told me about a friend of hers from New York college days called Felice Rosser, who used to hang out at CBGBs and was a friend of [the late artist Jean-Michel] Basquiat. A year ago, she played me Felice’s demos, and I loved them. We had a lot in common, coming from that fertile post-punk period where dub, funk, Afrobeat and free jazz were our inspirations along with punk rock. I produced her album, so when we recorded “Tide Keep Turning” and were thinking about call-and-response vocals, she was an obvious choice.Are you planning to tour with the album? JA: We have already started to tour the album, and we are getting a good response, although we aren’t an easy product to market!Are you committed to working together solely as a duo? Any chance you might bring in some more players (or maybe form a band)? JA: If there is a rule, it’s that there are no rules, so yes, anything is possible!Mauro, why did you decide to include “Qui Non Vorrei Morire,” a song recorded by your father Daniele, adapted from a poem by Vittorio Bodini? Mauro Durante: I've always loved that poem, and my father’s setting of it is just beautiful. I think the album where he interpreted Bodini's poems with his music [Le Mani del Sud, 2011) is his best. I miss him dearly, and music is what makes me feel most connected with him.
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