Stereo Embers The Podcast 0481: Barry Adamson (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Magazine)

“Scala”

It’s hard to explain everything Barry Adamson did before he was thirty. By then, his resume’ was so packed with highlights it was hard to believe there was room for more. But there was. Like, a lot more. Let me explain. The Manchester-born Barry Adamson got his start in music in the late ’70s by playing bass for Magazine, a band led by ex-Buzzcock Howard DeVoto. Adamson, who was briefly in the Buzzcocks himself, went on to play with Visage and Luxuria before joining Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Adamson played on legendary Cave albums like From Her To Eternity and Kicking Against The Pricks and from there, he stepped into the Iggy Pop fold and toured with Mr. Pop in ’87. By then, Adamson was close to thirty and in many ways, that’s the point where he really started to spread his musical wings, realizing he liked being on his own than being one of the guys in a band. From there, Adamson started to explore electronic and dub-fueled soundscapes and he moved effortlessly from strength to strength, releasing classic solo albums like Moss Side Story, the 1992 Mercury Prize nominated Soul Murder and his new one, La Scala. More on that in a minute. Over the course of his winning career, Adamson has played with The Birthday, Party, collaborated with everyone from Pulp’s Jarvis Crocker to Billy McKenzie of the Associates, contributed to movie soundtracks like David Lynch’s Lost Highway and done remixes for everyone from Depeche Mode to The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. His new album La Scala is the original score for the 2023 documentary Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise And Fall Of The World’s Wildest Cinema. The film is a stirring and rousing homage to the legendary London arthouse movie theatre and Adamson’s inventive score uses elements of jazz, funk and post-punk noir to detail the rise and fall of a building that meant a lot of people whose lives were saved by the freedom and spirit of life in the counterculture.

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