While he has dipped his toes in many areas of the arts, if there’s one thing you should expect from an Adam Stafford album, it’s the unexpected.
The term ‘polymath’ is one sometimes chucked around with abandon, but, as well as his musical career, the Falkirk-based artist is an accomplished filmmaker, having gained a Scottish BAFTA, plus awards at the Palm Springs and San Fransisco film festivals for his collaboration with author Alan Bissett soundtracking The Shutdown, a 2010 short film about an accident at the local Grangemouth oil refinery.
He’s also known for delving into the world of the promo video, not only for his own releases but for Scottish alt.rockers The Twilight Sad’s single ‘Seven Years of Letters’. He also does the artwork for his own releases, including ‘Imaginary Walls Collapse’, shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year award.
Stafford has made 15 albums now, veering from pop and soul to ambient drone via psychedelic synth jams and deconstructed blues.
All of which makes the early collections of perfectly-crafted alternative pop anthems with his band Y’all is Fantasy Island seem quite… well, normal.
“It’s probably just a case of getting really bored of different styles or different genres quite easily,” Stafford told Mike Melville. “I’ve just never wanted to be the type of musician that just sticks in one place and tries to repeat the same thing over and over again.”
Lockdown led to Stafford teaching himself to play piano, that period lending itself to a spate of songwriting and solo recording, with the first fruits of this more ambient phase producing albums ‘The Acid Bothy’ and ‘Trophic Asynchrony’.
“I do a lot of quite wild experimentation at home,” he admits, “and some very embarrassing experimentation as well, but that will never see the light of day!”
So perhaps his newest release, his twelfth solo long-player, ‘Daylight Slavings’ should come as no surprise. Taking self-confessed influences from the edges of jazz and reggae, it hints at Theolonious Monk and King Tubby layered between Brian Eno and Steve Reich.
Ever one for self-effacing humour, Stafford joked to the Manic Pop Thrills blog: “I sent the mixes over to (producer) Robbie Lesiuk under the heading of ‘Morose Piano Album’”
Which, for fans of Stafford, will come as no surprise.
‘Daylight Slavings’ is out now. This article originally appeared in the Portsmouth News.