Adamson, Barry

Stranger On The Sofa is the first post-Mute Records release from Barry Adamson and the first on his new Central Control International label. After stints in the majors, the minors and the last of the independents, Adamson delivers a D.I.Y. masterpiece that picks up where 2002’s King Of Nothing Hill left off. Darkly cinematic, with its tales of future past, memories lost and dying love, Stranger On The Sofa is a film-jazz masterpiece that doesn’t shy away from sentimentality but leaves enough slack for blistering prog-rock work-outs.  
 
Born and raised in Manchester’s Moss Side in 1958, Adamson has been fascinated with music, art and film from the very beginning. At age ten he wrote his first song, “Brain Pain” followed quickly by “Visions of the Blind,” a progressive rock concept album that lasted about three minutes. When punk rock exploded in the late ’70s, he picked up the bass guitar overnight and joined Howard Devoto’s Magazine, who went on to record five influential albums and tour the world. 
 
In the ’80s, Adamson played in a legendary line-up of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds. “Let’s call this my black-and-blue period.” Adamson explains, “The music, like me, was dark and unsettling.” He stuck around for three albums, all the while getting a taste for other instruments, learning different song structures and dreaming up a new kind of album. 
 
He next began sketching out the tunes that would become Moss Side Story, the slice of Northern noir that became his calling card with film directors. In fact, shortly after its release, director Derek Jarman hired him for a scene in the movie The Last of England. Adamson has since immersed himself in the art of film music composition, and has returned to the form again and again, creating classic noir albums like Soul Murder, The Negro Inside Me, and The King of Nothing Hill.