A MAN CALLED ADAM
March 15th, 2002 by freddie96
Stardust in their eyes
1. So many sides to you
Try making sense of A Man Called Adam and you might be in for a bit of perplexity. To say Sally Rodgers and Steve Jones are multi-faceted – and multi-talented – is something of an understatement. They are both veterans of the studio and dancefloor who still dream of pop stardom, chilled stoners with a penchant for the Pixies and Radiohead, and the messiahs of Ibiza with their feet firmly planted in the twisted city of London…
After bumping into them at a number of Big Chill events – and hearing them play at them – I felt it was time to find out a bit more about what makes them tick. Such a statement of intent, however, immediately makes them smile: A Man Called Adam have been here before. ‘Journalists always seem to be earnest young men keen to get to the bottom of things,’ Sally disarmingly tells me at the outset of our interview, with more than a hint of amusement in her voice. The inference is plain: Don’t expect any easy answers. A Man Called Adam are more interested in making music than attempting to explain where it comes from.
Over the course of a few hours, however, they make me thoroughly at home in their Hackney studio. While Steve plays me a range of rough mixes from their new album, and a few of their favourite new tunes, Sally engages me in a long and meandering conversation. Somehow we make our way from run-of-the-mill chat about their plans for the future to questions about the relationship between religion and music – via California, Ibiza, Uruguay and King’s Cross. It really wasn’t so much an interview as an enjoyable and lazy afternoon spent in the company of two thoroughly genuine people.
How very like them. After so many years in the business, A Man Called Adam have learnt to do things in their own sweet way and in their own sweet time. Thus they do and don’t play the pop game. On the one hand, Sally gleefully demolishes the idea that A Man Called Adam are stars of the current chill-out scene: ‘I rather like it when people come up to us at gigs and ask ?Who are you? Have you got a deal??’ On the other hand, she confesses, ‘we’re guilty of openly manipulating the image thing and making ourselves look bigger than we really are’. There are many such apparent contradictions to them.
A Man Called Adam, its seems, have hidden depths that have yet to be fully explored or integrated into their work. By making their way through the modern music marketplace as haphazardly as they do, they are, however, also contriving to keep those depths well protected. In the long run, this can only be good for their music; it will always have a job to do.
Certainly Sally is aware of sides to A Man Called Adam as yet obscured from view. ‘We can be very dark,’ she admits. ‘Maybe we don’t bring it out in our music enough.’ Although they titled their last album ‘Duende’ – sweet sorrow – for the most part it was a glorious, summery piece of work in which the light far outweighed the dark. (It is also, incidentally, an album that still sounds remarkably fresh as a whole given how familiar some of its individual tracks have now become.)
Looking at the proposed cover art for their forthcoming album, however, the darkness is plain to see: it’s a powerful, heavily exposed, brooding image of the sea by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sagimoto. In black and white. Not exactly sunshine summer stuff. Sally sees it slightly differently, though: ‘It’s not so much dark as abstract, elemental… with a kind of Zen quality. We’re hoping to get some of those qualities across on this album.’
2. At home and abroad
Ah, the album. A Man Called Adam have been working slowly and steadily on a new album for some time now, and having secured a new record deal with Pagan, they are keener than ever to get it finished. There was a six-year gap between their first two albums, ‘The Apple’ and ‘Duende’, and four have passed since the latter first saw light of day. They are doing their best to protect their studio time to get the new one finished.
‘I’m sick of travelling and DJ-ing,’ Sally tells me. ‘I’ve seen enough of the world for now. I just want to stay at home and in my studio and make music. I know that might sound a bit snotty – international DJ-ing can give you an enviably 5-star lifestyle. But it’s boring.’
When I call a couple of weeks later, however, to ask Sally and Steve onto the Big Chill’s Sunday night slot on www.space.fm, they are off to France for a week of musical workshopping and collaboration at one of those rather grand rural recording complexes that the likes of Cher and Jon Bon Jovi tend to patronise. Clearly, some invitations are just too good to be refused.
Like Uruguay. A while back Sally and Stever were asked to play a small party for about 500 at Punta Del Este, South America’s very own summer hotspot, with the promise of a spin-off sunset mix album thrown in. Just listening to that album (recorded for the most part live at the beach party), you can tell this wasn’t work so much as pleasure. What’s more, they had next to no trouble licensing the tracks they wanted to use. So with the exception of an unavailable Aphex Twin track, and another by Coldplay for the US version, the resulting compilation is almost exactly as they wanted it.
With the inclusion of Radiohead (infallibly remixed by Zero 7), the Beta Band and the Pixies, this album makes quite a change from the Café del Mar and Real Ibiza compilations A Man Called Adam have done so much to popularise. For their fans, of course, it has the added pleasure of containing one of their own new tracks, ‘Steady’, an all too rare occurrence these days. Having seen their work grace all too many compilations – at no great gain to themselves – they are being a good deal more wary these days about who they license their songs to.
Like ‘The Longest Day’ on 1999’s Real Ibiza 2 mix (one of the strongest tracks on one of the strongest Ibiza compilations to date), ‘Steady’ bodes well for their new album. With another touching, heartfelt vocal from Sally woven into Steve’s dubbed-out beats, it’s easily the best thing they’ve done for ages. I’m gagging to hear more.
3. Heaven now
Sitting in A Man Called Adam’s Hackney studio a few weeks ago, that’s what I got. Well, almost. For nothing from the new album they play me is finished. ‘These mixes have everything but the kitchen sink thrown in,’ grimaces Sally. Yet at the same time what I heard was tantalisingly, recognisably, classic A Man Called Adam material in the making. All the signs are that this is going to be a gorgeous, finely produced, sensual album… but it’s too soon to say any more than that. Hype is simply counter-productive.
Sally and Steve both agree, and there’s the rub. While they say they would love to turn themselves into a full-blown, good-time electronic pop outfit – ‘a fucking dope band ’, they say, like Roni Size’s outfit but with more rock ‘n’ roll styling (Sally’s been learning the guitar) – they are too rootedly themselves to manufacture this out of grease paint and PR mirrors. For all their love and understanding of show biz, at heart A Man Called Adam are too ordinarily real people to become mindless pop fodder for the masses.
That is not to say they don’t enjoy their time in the spotlight when it comes around – as it seems to do every few years. ‘Oh, we’ve been in every trendy genre there is,’ laughs Sally. ‘Acid jazz, nu house, chill out. Trends come and go.’ Yet at the same time she knows that the burgeoning interest in more mellow musical flavas within mainstream dance culture can only be in their favour. ‘Chill out is becoming commercially successful – or at least a little – so it’s a great opportunity for us. We intend to take it.’
No sooner is this said, however, than it is partially retracted. For A Man Called Adam are very wary of the seductions on offer today to successful DJs and recording artists; they would rather do things their own way. They want to make their new album ‘one of those records you just go back to again and again’, so there will be no rush-releasing it to coincide with the summer season. ‘Maybe we’re masochists,’ she suggests, only half-mockingly. Steve darkly nods, grins, then bursts into laughter. ‘Oh God no,’ he groans.
4. Easy to love
So there you have it. A Man Called Adam are either going to blow us all away with an album of luscious, classic electronic pop or… they will just do what they do best. Which is, every now and then, to pull out a plum for their fans. It won’t necessarily tear up the charts or make them millionaires, but it will quietly and slowly come to enrich the lives of many people.
How many people exactly doesn’t really matter. For all her jokes about being a successful pop bitch like Chryssie Hynde and PJ Harvey, Sally is far too intelligent and sensitive to do anything other than follow her heart. And she says she cannot really see herself doing anything else with her life than make music of a particular emotional quality. ‘Music is charged with feeling,’ she says. ‘It’s the passion you feel for your god.’
She doesn’t need to spell it out – music is A Man Called Adam’s god and religion. And something tells me they are set to make a fresh crop of converts sometime very soon.
Freddie B, June 2001
