Barry Adamson has announced details of a brand new 10-track album, ‘Cut To Black’, set for release on the artist’s own imprint on 17 May 2024. Listen to the first single “The Last Words of Sam Cooke” now.
‘Cut To Black’ is Adamson’s tenth solo studio album, and comes accompanied by an unmissable series of dates across the UK and Europe in spring / summer 2024 – full details below.
STREAM “THE LAST WORDS OF SAM COOKE” SINGLE HERE
‘Cut To Black’ follows a fertile period of creativity, reflection and investigation from Adamson, who released ‘Up Above The City, Down Beneath The Stars’, the first volume of his memoirs, in 2021. The book charts the years from his inception in Manchester’s Brutalist heart, his difficult journey through childhood and how art and music became his liberation, via his father’s jazz record collection and the spy theme sounds of John Barry, through transformative years in Magazine, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, and up to the release of his first solo album, ‘Moss Side Story’ in 1989.
The book’s concept is typically inventive, with Adamson looking at the world as an observer. As he puts it:
“I started to imagine my life without me in it. An author-as-observer, looking down upon this Murky World during that time and making a record of what I found there.”
Bringing us neatly to the first taste of what to expect from Adamson’s latest studio album. Launching today with the album’s opener, “The Last Words of Sam Cooke”, he deftly drops us in the Haçienda Motel in South Central Los Angeles, 11 December 1964, and into the head of the great singer as he makes his fatal date with destiny, picking up Elisa Boyer and ending up getting both barrels of motel manager Bertha Franklin’s shotgun. Fellow artist and co-conspirator Siena Barnes worked up the clues of Adamson’s enquiry into the script of a clandestine sting, a tragedy set within blissful soul sounds, high on swirling gospel organ keyboards and a chorus that repeats Cooke’s reported last words: “Lady, you shot me!”.
The new album, ‘Cut To Black‘, journeys through rambunctious odes, mixes elements of soul, R&B, hip hop and funk with AI and takes in Manhattan disco. Adamson examines various lives cut short, explores notions of race, and invites us to reflect on how much society has really changed since the original Civil Rights movement of the mid 20th-century, all with a deft, louche touch and gleeful wordplay and associations, both aural and visual.
Adamson’s recent work includes an original soundtrack for Scala!!!, the acclaimed full length documentary on the legendary independent London cinema that inspired generations of artists, filmmakers and musicians, co-directed by Jane Giles and Ali Catterall. The Scala cinema in Kings Cross (1978-1993) was the world’s most influential and notorious cinema, with over a million people passing through its doors for revolutionary double-bills and all-nighters of classics, cult movies, horror, kung fu, LGBT+ and live music. Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/jovQuVxS2hk
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Barry Adamson has been creating all of his life. Brought up in Manchester’s Moss Side, Adamson learnt to play the bass overnight for Magazine. When they disbanded, five albums later in 1981, his singular style was spotted by The Birthday Party, with whom he played several times.
His establishment as a solo artist came after a three-year stint with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds with the release of his classic first solo album, ‘Moss Side Story’ – the ultimate soundtrack to an “imaginary film” – which raised Adamson’s name as a composer of diverse complexity; able to tell a story with music, where the images were those supplanted in the minds of the listeners. Adamson has worked with some of the film industry’s most intriguing mavericks including Derek Jarman (The Last of England, 1987), David Lynch (The Lost Highway, 1997), Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers, 1994) and Danny Boyle (The Beach, 2000).
Having released nine studio albums, including the 1992 Mercury Music Prize nominated ‘Soul Murder’, 1996’s ‘Oedipus Schmoedipus’, an album celebrating his 40 years in music, ‘Memento Mori’ (2018), and his most recent release, ‘Know Where To Run’, which was in part inspired by a recent US tour, back playing with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds after 23 years, Adamson’s talents are as much in demand by new generations of artists as he was after his first solo release, with collaborations in recent years across a variety of art forms, including an Olivier Award winning ballet performance by Sylvie Guillem and the Ballet Boyz scored by Adamson.
BARRY ADAMSON – NEW ALBUM: ‘CUT TO BLACK’ – OUT 17 MAY 2024
PRE-ORDER HERE
STREAM “THE LAST WORDS OF SAM COOKE” SINGLE HERE
FOR MORE INFORMATION
www.barryadamson.com
www.twitter.com/adamsonbarry
www.facebook.com/adamsonbarry
