Johannesburg EP

Johannesburg is a new set of recordings 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 2016 over two all-day-and-all-night sessions and produced by Mumford & Sons and The Very Best's Swedish electronic music maestro, Johan Hugo.

Marcus Mumford: "The whole thing came together because of Johan (Hugo) really - and actually they had acted like sonic trailblazers in a lot of ways - marrying afrobeat rhythms, Esau and Baaba's voices and languages, over Western songwriting." Johan Hugo is a well-connected man. He knew the route from A to C without needing to consult B. Mumford & Sons stuck close to this guy. Savvy.

So with The Very Best Very Much on board for studio action, and with Senegal's favourite son Baaba just a phone call away, there had to be a young South African band that could step up to the plate and make music that connected the dots.

Beatenberg were the one. They could play, but crucially they had songs too. Great songs. They'll say now that they're Mumford & Sons fans too, but it didn't matter. They wanted to hang out. They were smart, and had ideas. They were willing to give it a shot. Enter into the spirit of this thing. Good lads.

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 paneling 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.