The jazz musician Sun-Ra once declared that ‘Space Is The Place’. Coming from a man who believed he had been born on Saturn and transported to Earth by flying saucer in order to save black America, such an affinity for infinity is to be expected. London singer-songwriter Adem is also concerned with the cosmos. His second solo album, a dizzying space concept record called ‘Love And Other Planets’, shows he has his own, less insane, perspective. “There are a lot of records out there that tackle space, but there aren’t many space records that don’t take a sci-fi approach. There’s nothing very human. I wanted to make an album that was about people and people’s view of space.”
Adem’s last album, the acclaimed ‘Homesongs’, is also a concept record. It is about the internal and the personal: the microcosm of your own little world. Love and other planets is, in many ways, about the opposite. “It’s micro and macro. This album has the tiny things and the absolutely enormous things,” he explains. “The reaction between cells and the reaction between planets and galaxies are so similarly linked. Like the powers of gravity and, if you like, the powers of love or attraction.”
Like ‘Homesongs’, the new album was entirely recorded in Adem’s Stoke Newington flat, a former light-industrial unit. It is a charming place where harmoniums and harpsichords and fridges and cookers are afforded equal space. With such instruments to hand, it is easy to see why ‘Love And Other Planets’ became such a densely orchestrated record. “I thought I’d said everything I had to say about the ‘Homesongs’ way of recording; the cosy, warm, late at night way. That was all about gaps. Space, as in between sounds. And letting sounds resonate and attach. Rather than choosing not to play, this album is about choosing the right thing to play, or the right time or combination. It’s about opening up the sound.” So where ‘Homesongs’ was stripped bare, ‘Love…’ is a rich tapestry of strange and beautiful noises. Thumb pianos and violins adorn layered backing vocals, while handclaps, drums and electric bass provide unexpected, sometimes thrilling, changes in direction.
“There are loads of treats in there. Loads of weirdness and skewed moments: strange time signatures that help propel a song somewhere else. You’re almost not meant to notice it. Like a subsonic tone that makes you feel scared.” The challenge, Adem says, was not to be clever but be interesting. “I think it’s important to have those depths in there, those layers you can peel back. But not at the expense of it being a good listen.” Here, he admits American composer Steve Reich was an influence. “He’s a hero of mine. I love his process music. I thought it would be interesting to try and put that into what are essentially pop songs.”
Folk music, or rather it’s jazzily named successor nu-folk music, has been much discussed this year. The summer of folk is upon us, they say, and Adem is generally regarded a leading light, if not an architect, of this revival. “I’ve never really considered myself a folk musician but I’m very comfortable to be sitting around a table with James Yorkston, King Creosote and Vashti Bunyan.” He met many of his contemporaries through Homefires, an annual festival he curates at London’s Conway Hall, now in its third year. In the past it has seen folk luminaries like Bert Jansch play alongside Beth Orton and Badly Drawn Boy, as well as introducing then unknown stars like Joanna Newsom and José Gonzalez. “I tell everyone to do what they want to do. If they’ve always wanted to play a set with dustbin lids and bongos then that’s what I encourage. You get to see a side of musicians you’d never normally see.”
This year Homefires plays host to Vashti Bunyan, the Elysian Quartet and Pierre Bastien, a mechanics composer who builds Meccano engines that play his music on stage. Adem tries to book adventurous acts and finds a lot of ‘proper’ folk music stuffy because of the strict adherence to tradition. “I don’t like the idea that if a song hasn’t been through a thousand people it’s not a folk song. It wasn’t just delivered to the human race and a thousand people knew it at once. It might be a song about crops but someone wrote it.”
I’ve never really considered myself a folk musician
Adem, it seems, likes to keep himself busy. Alongside Sam Jeffers and Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden he is a member of post-rock band Fridge whose long-awaited fifth album should soon be complete. He also heads a mass improvisation group called Assembly where “fifty or so musicians get together and make a racket.” An album from this intriguing project is also forthcoming.
For now, though, he is concentrating on ‘Love And Other Planets’. Although he recorded most of the album himself (“everything apart from the good bits of drumming, the female backing vocals and the violin”), he has assembled “a great band” to tour the record. He is hopeful for the future, something reflected in the new album. As well as love and comets and stars it has a surfeit of hope. “I hope it is a hopeful record. It’s much better than being a happy record or a positive record because hope suggests challenge, and coming through challenge. Ultimately I think that is what makes us do good things and be good things.”
