LOVES022: Adam Stafford – Reverse Drift
Adam Stafford is an experimental pop master. After last year’s Taser Revelations (Song, by Toad) embraced the ‘pop’ end of that spectrum, he’s back at the ‘experimental’ end for his latest project. REVERSE DRIFT is the kind of multimedia experiment he was always meant to make: a 56-page photobook paired with a 40-minute recording.
The beautiful photobook features 24 landscape photographs by Adam, taken over a period of 18 years, 1999-2017. The single composition in three movements was recorded live and semi-improvised in one take with no overdubs and was created only with a synthesizer, a sequencer, some effects pedals and Adam’s voice.
Reverse Drift: when too much ice thaws and breaks next to an ocean or river it makes the water run backwards.
Listen
Launch shows
Thursday 29th June – Stereo, Glasgow
Adam Stafford + Tract (Ela Orleans side project) + Sonny Carntyne + Paul Cowan
Tickets
Ticket + photobook/album bundle
Facebook event
Friday 30th June – Newport Sound at Rio Community Centre, Newport-on-Tay
Adam Stafford + Crakes + September 70 + Fife Santino
Ticket info
Facebook event
Saturday 1st July – Leith Depot, Edinburgh
Adam Stafford + Half-Life Working Group (Drew Wright/Wounded Knee new project) + Sonny Carntyne
Tickets
Ticket + photobook/album bundle
Facebook event
About Reverse Drift
From Adam: “Reverse Drift came to fruition after myself and Gerry Loves Records had a conversation in 2014 about releasing a collection of photography with some music. I have been taking pictures since I was in high school and the oldest image in the collection, ‘Lionthorn’ dates back to 1999 and was hand printed in the dark room of my art class in school. I have always been interested in human-less landscapes and tried to visually capture that in my short film ‘The Shutdown’ (2009), with most of the pictures in this book either conveying empty rooms, empty vistas, or vistas shot through the windows of empty rooms. I had also been looking for an excuse to record and release an album of improvised music and this gave me the chance to explore that. The track Reverse Drift could have been chopped-up and issued as segments or tracks but I wanted to present it as a long continuous piece of music that you experience, for better or worse, in one sitting.”
Recent praise for Adam Stafford
“Probably the closest Stafford has come to the US minimalism of Steve Reich. That songs can stimulate the head one minute and break the heart the next would be a triumph for any musician. Yet again, Adam Stafford has created one of the best albums of the year (in `Taser Revelations’).” – The National
“Adam Stafford’s set was stunning, a wash of looped guitar, effects pedal and vocal soundtrack atmospherics.” – The Scotsman (4/5)
“A songwriter of real depth, rich in understanding, in melodic virtuosity, his work has gradually built up into an imposing, heroic catalogue.” – Clash Magazine
“Adam Stafford is one hell of a force and quite possibly one of the best live artists of our times.” – God is in The TV
About Adam Stafford
Adam Stafford is a musician and filmmaker from Falkirk. Formerly of the group Y’all is Fantasy Island, he issued two experimental a capella albums, “Awnings” and “Miniature Porcelain Horse Emporium” in 2009 before releasing his debut studio set “Build a Harbour Immediately” in 2011. He followed with two more experimental pop albums on Song, by Toad Records, an experimental improv cassette EP and a pop banger single on Gerry Loves Records, and also composed and performed original music for Alan Bissett’s one-man show ‘What The Falkirk’.
His film work include short “The Shutdown” (2009) written by Scottish author and playwright Alan Bissett, the video for The Twilight Sad’s single “Seven Years of Letters” (2010),
and “No Hope For Men Below” (2013), a poetic reinterpretation of The Redding Pit Disaster of Falkirk 1923, written in Broad Scots by local poet and author Janet Paisley. He is currently trying to write a horror film set in 1993, about a maintenance train driver who infiltrates a Norse Black Metal cult in the rural North of Scotland.
