Justin Adams is, according to Songlines Magazine, "a distinguished and unique guitarist who has played with the cream of left-field musicians including Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, Jaki Liebezeit, Hector Zazou, Natacha Atlas and Brian Eno". But last year, this high-profile performer, hailed as "Britain’s answer to Ry Cooder" (The Guardian), retreated to a back-room studio, and after 20 years in the business, recorded his debut solo album, Desert Road. It cost just £600 to make, and in absolute terms of musicianship and quality it shames the excesses of many a multi-million pound project. Both Folk Roots and Songlines unhesitatingly declared Desert Road "a masterpiece". Critics hailed it as an utterly innovative Anglo-Arabic blues fusion, or (as the Guardian put it) "a blend of Ali Farka Toure, JJ Cale, Ry Cooder and Mark Knopfler". But however they chose to describe it, the universal opinion is that this is the work of a remarkable and original talent. Justin’s eclectic multi-culturalism and fascination with Arab forms, owes much to his background. His father was the British Ambassador in Jordan and Egypt, where Justin’s love for Arab instrumentation, rhythmic characteristics and distinctive tonal styles was first forged. He first started to play guitar when he was at Eton, inspired by the emergence of punk in the ‘70s, and particularly The Clash. Moving on to The Courtauld Institute to study art history, he secured a degree despite ducking out of college for a term to take on a national tour with Kid Creole, as part of support band The Impossible Dreamers. After the Impossible Dreamers split, he became involved with Frank Chickens and Blyth Power. He was always hankering after a platform for the incorporation of middle-eastern elements in the music, but the opportunity was never properly embraced until Jah Wobble (wild east-end one-time mate of Johnny Rotten) recruited Justin (ex-public school educated Courtauld graduate) to Invaders of the Heart, and suddenly he had free rein to explore a whole gamut of musical enthusiasms in an inspired and experimental musical context. No matter how incongruous the conjunction of backgrounds, there was no doubt that Jah Wobble and Justin forged a powerful musical connection. It lasted for eight years. Since the association ended in the mid-‘90s Justin has been working with Sinead O’Connor and Natacha Atlas, with whom he co-wrote Kidda which featured on the celebrated Momo/Arabesque CD. He’s appeared at WOMAD, performing Desert Road to a fantastic response, and has produced two albums for the French/Moroccan theatrical group Lo’Jo. Last year he wrote the soundtrack for Kin, a feature-film set in Namibia which releases in May. and somewhere along the line, he’s managed to take on a world tour as guitarist with Sinead O’Connor, after playing on her EP "Gospel Oak". Perhaps most extraordinarily, together with Lo’Jo and a host of other musicians, he joined the Touareg tribes of the southern Sahara for a festival of music in the heart of the desert. On the first full moon of the third millennium, in the remote area of Tin-Essako, 1200 km due east of the Malian capital Bamako, they staged the first ‘Festival in the Desert’ - an extension of an annual event called ‘Takubelt’ which has been taking place since time immemorial. Given that Tin-Essako has to rank as one of the most inaccessible inhabited areas in the known world, some would say that Justin has already pursued his musical ambitions to the ends of the earth. www.justinadams.co.uk