Johannesburg Ep

Mumford & Sons are very proud to announce details of a new set of recordings entitled 'Johannesburg,' made with Baaba Maal, Beatenberg and The Very Best. The songs were recorded in Studio 2 and the Auditorium of the The South African Broadcasting Corporation, Johannesburg in February over two all-day-and–all–night sessions and produced by Mumford & Sons and The Very Best's Swedish electronic music maestro, Johan Hugo.

Earlier this year, Mumford & Sons embarked on an historic, sell-out tour of South Africa. It's a country less travelled by your standard touring band, and usually reserved as a token 48-hour pit stop to the megastars. Stadium 1, stadium 2. In and out. Mumford & Sons have never followed the predictable route though, it's not a part of their DNA.

A studio was booked in Johannesburg. Not a conventional recording studio, again, that would be far too easy. The South African Broadcasting Corporation had a room. It had two. Literally, two rooms. A few corridors away, and around the corner. It was a magnificent building though, all imposing wood panelling and endless corridors leading to more corridors. It had something a bit brutalist about it. It had a vibe.

The song which opens Johannesburg, "There Will Be Time," is a belter. Tender but not shackled by any sense of restraint. It has that special inference of yearning that Mumford & Sons do so incredibly well, and when combining that with the musicianship of Baaba Maal's glorious crew and his vocals which interweave mesmerisingly with that yearning thing, you've got something really quite otherworldly. Otherworldly indeed. When the musicians amassed on stage in Pretoria to perform it together, a terrific storm raged overhead and the thunder seemed to crack with percussionist Mamadou Saar's every other beat. It was quite something to behold. Pathetic fallacy, of sorts. In the rain the good people of Pretoria and its surrounding villages danced and embraced the moment. This one was theirs to embrace.