ADAM SCRIMSHIRE, who you might know better as a recording artist by his surname only; now there’s a chap who knows a thing or two about the groove.
Not only is he co-founder of the excellent South London curators of the cool Albert’s Favourites, who’ve put out a slew of fine tunes from the likes of Jonny Drop, The Expansions and Hector Plimmer; he’s released some incredibly lovely, lambent, eclectic albums down through the past decade himself.
(Oh, in case you’re wondering who the titular Albert is who selects the favourites: why, that’s Adam’s grandad, who adored making sure the journeys for family holidays had a soundtrack tape amassed from the faves of the past few months. In the car, pop in the tape – “Albert’s Favourites”. Voila. Actual 100% cool story, bro.)
Today he’s announcing the November release of his fifth studio set, Believers Vol.1 – and what better way to announce than to bust out an excellent track from the album, “Lost in Space And Time” featuring the mellifluous vocal glide of Bessi.
Have a watch of the lyric video below. It’s like a cool breeze on a stuffy day, taking building blocks of acid jazz and modern British soul and fashioning up a tune so effortless it slides to your aural pleasure centres like honey.
“I’m gonna let your soul know that you need to sit down, down, down,” hushes Bessi, the Brighton-based chanteuse – be sitting please. This is three and a half minutes you need to pay attention to.
It’s sure works for me as a come-hither for the new album, for which Adam has assembled a whole host of vocal talent for a journey into the interstices of jazz, soul, Afro beats, and electronica. Playing out where sounds and musical traditions meet; where the invention is. Where the fun is.
Adam says: “Writing and producing my last album, Listeners, opened the floodgates for me. I’ve written more in the last 18 months than in years. Practicing for the live band levelled up my playing and opened up possibilities in writing I couldn’t find before.
“Since then I’ve written more than two albums’ worth of Scrimshire songs; but I really wanted to try and focus the experience and separate between music that represented the positivity and optimism I’ve experienced in recent years against my more introverted and angrier instincts.
“Believers Vol.1 represents warmth and hope. Everyone I worked with early in lockdown seemed to want to express those longings for physical and emotional connection, too. The whole album reaches out; I think it’s full of long embraces.
“But it is also, for me personally, a love letter to black music and the black artists that shaped everything I care about sonically, from my very first memories of music until now.
“It draws from sounds I grew up around in the early to mid-Eighties, classic records from the Seventies that I’ve never tired of, but important dance records from the late Nineties and early 2000s that celebrated and subverted those ideas, too.”
Sounds like it’s gonna be a proper journey. And Adam, being thoughtful? He’s made the tape. Crackin’. Chocks away.
Scrimshire’s Believers Vol.1 will be released by Albert’s Favourites on November 13th; pre-order yours here.
