All Stories (RSS)
Adem - Artist Profile
Adem and his 'Homesongs' album...In common with Four Tet, there are apparent similarities in methodology here. Both records display a meticulous devotion to detail that would be verging on the nerdy were it not for the amazing emotional power they are able to harness through this Faberge egg of sonic filigree. Both records feel like they were made in the early hours of the morning (which is by and large when they were made). And both construct their own worlds of sound so fully-formed and convincing that it seems implausible that these places could’ve remained hidden for so long.
There, however, the similarities end… For a start ‘Homesongs’ is full of the human voice. It seems remarkable that when Adem (say Ah-dem) and Kieran were in Fridge it was deemed an instrumental project because “none of [them] could sing”. Adem started singing in earnest in early 2002, and having made two tracks and found his voice decided to think of himself as a singer. It was a good decision.
Now the rich brown-ish timbres of his voice recalls all manner of timeless singers nuanced throughout. Here a shading of - is it? - John Martyn, or maybe one of the Tims (Buckley? Hardin? Rose?), even perhaps a hint of early, pre-bombast Springsteen in his cracked and tired delivery, and what about Shane McGowan? Paul Buchanan? Aidan Moffat? Nick Drake? Young Tom Waits?.
“I decided to be honest,” Adem says. “That was the only was I could be convinced and convincing.” Now on ‘Homesongs’ he has emerged as an expressive singer who can tend towards making everyone else seem crass and over-wrought.
All told, ‘Homesongs’ has the feel of an instant classic*. As a bookend to ‘Rounds’ it could be thought of as a folktronica record without the tronica, except that it couldn’t accurately be called a folk record either. What it is is sad, warm, hopeful, delicate, human, over-reaching and yet essentially small. By narrowing his scope to the simple stuff of life, Adem has been able to make a kind of accidental conceptual record built up from “notes to self” about the people and places he holds dear.
‘Homesongs’ (as its title suggests) is set in and around the domestic environment from whence it sprang. Demoed first in his tiny bedroom in Whitechapel and later recorded in his slightly more spacious apartment in Stoke Newington, it was made with just two borrowed catch-all mics and a computer in the corner so old that it had to be wrapped in Adem’s duvet to baffle the motor hum. Sometimes it feels like it is us, the listener, who is being wrapped in a warm duvet.
For all its harnessing of the power of (basic) computers, however, ‘Homesongs’ is all about the ringing of strings between notes, intakes of breath and old and odd “real” instruments. Harmoniums wheeze into life as if borrowed from Ivor Cutler’s Scottish Living Room, an autoharp twangs to the light impact of a pencil, a child’s toy clicks, and a glockenspiel provides lone accompaniment on a ‘Long Drive Home’, and nowhere is a drum-kit to be found.** “There’s a lot of strange stuff on the record that the casual listener wouldn’t necessarily notice, but is there in the atmosphere of the tracks,” says Adem.
Adem had originally intended to extend the half-dozen demos he had written back in Whitechapel and thought he’d hit upon a direction utilising the great players he’d amassed around him for live work. The magic present onstage, however, evaporated when commuted to the studio and he was forced to start completely over and go back to the way he had always worked in the past; producing and writing simultaneously; making the bass sound right while writing lyrics.
Having abandoned the demo recordings, he set about “doing it properly” and ‘Homesongs’ was finished with Adem playing near everything himself. “It was mainly done by me at home at three o’clock in the morning. And it can be a bit lonely to do a record on your own, especially when you’ve been used to playing with two other people.”
“I didn’t want to hide behind lo-fi, low-key cuteness. It’s not a selfish thing, these songs were written for people,” he says. “And I found when you commit to something and put your faith in it, it gets a real momentum. In the end the record turned out more understated than where I started; there is no backwards guitar or violent chopped up stuff. I threw all that away and went back and discovered the real core of the songs.”
He did this by a weird process of thinking a lot and not thinking at all. “Initially I just pressed ‘Play’ and sang to see what would come out. And then kept the key phrases and wrote around them,” he says. “Then I really thought about it and became very particular about my words. You only have one shot to get it right and while you don’t know what other people’s experience is, hopefully they can see a bit of themselves through what you do. I’m just pleased it’s come out sounding so right.”
Maybe this is less surprising when it is taken into account that although ‘Homesongs’ is ostensibly a debut album, it is actually the sum total of Adem recording “many, many projects over many years”. The ground has been well prepared, shall we say.
In addition to having a thing for in-depth analysis of his own material, Adem also goes deep on other people’s work too. “I spend a lot of time with Kieran and he gives me a lot of music,” he says. Unlike the notoriously voracious consumer Hebden, however, Adem gets a record and listens to it over and over again. Many of his favourite albums seem to be from 1972, but he strays to 1971 for Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’, his favourite favourite album.*** Elsewhere he checks Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidinanda’, her husband’s ‘A Love Supreme’, the work of Steve Reich, Lisa Germano, Radiohead, Jim O’Rourke, Bjork and Smashing Pumpkins, but if you can find them in ‘Homesongs’ I know not where.
The son of a classical pianist, Adem was brought up around music, beginning on piano before switching to guitar later at school, and passing through many bands of various types on the way before ending up with fellow pupils in Fridge. Later on they would famously form Badly Drawn Boy’s backing band.
These days Adem still has a variety of other projects on the go (not least of which another Fridge album due later in the year). There’s Assembly, who like Sun Ra’s Strange Strings exist on the premise of putting a big pile of instruments in front of people who haven’t played them before and seeing what results. This they’ve done at the Tate Britain and various other locales. There’s also various remixes, instrumental music and production work with other friends.
* All the more remarkable given that Adem is monoaural. ie. deaf in one ear, his left.
** There’s a side tom here and there and a hi-hat on one track.
***At the end of ‘Pillow’ Adem lapses into a few sad bars of “Jingle Bells’, itself a reference to Joni’s song ‘River’ where she does likewise.
Press Quotes
Belfast performance - “one can’t help but marvel”
Album - 'Love and Other Planets’ “hidden gem for the devoted fan”
- BBC Radio full review
“most successful of the album's” - The Independent full review
Written: 8th Jun, 06
Read: 3533 times
