Albert’s Favourites co-founder Adam Scrimshire is set to release his fifth album ‘Believers Vol. 1, drawing on his passion for jazz, soul and electronic music of all styles. DMCWORLD checks in with the main man for the lowdown…
Hello Adam, thanks for speaking with us. For anyone not familiar with you, please introduce yourself and what you do.
Hello. I am a writer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, mix engineer and DJ. I release music as Scrimshire, Aeshim and Modified Man (Modified Man is a duo with my friend Dave Koor). I also run the record labels Wah Wah 45s with Dom Servini, and Albert’s Favourites which I founded 5 years ago with Jonny Drop and Dave Koor.
Talk us through your new album ‘Believers Vol. 1’? What drove you to create the album?
When I started the previous record, Listeners, it was the first recordings for the Scrimshire project in 5 years, and it just opened me back up to writing that way again. I started having to prepare for live shows and knew I would have to take more responsibility for keyboard parts in the band, so I began practicing heavily on keys for the first time in my life really. Just the basics, scales and all that. It changed how I looked at the keyboard and how I approached writing and the writing came naturally out of the practice. I put together a lot of songs and as usual they didn’t all fit together, but I’ve been trying harder and harder to try and get some cohesion from track to track. Ultimately that split the music into two sets or “volumes”. Vol. 1 is warmer and more hopeful and energetic. Vol. 2 is more introverted. I think they straddle both ends of what turned into lockdown. Optimism initially and trying to reach out and look up, became replaced by anger at increasingly visible levels of injustice and violence, especially in the States, but also from a political perspective here in the UK. The denial of facts about the adverse effect of covid on black people and so much more. In some ways now, Vol. 1 feels out of time, but I want it out there, and the perspective and balance hopefully comes with Vol. 2.
You feature a lot of guest vocalists on the album, please tell us about (some of?) them, how you hooked up and what they brought to the record?
Well there hasn’t been much meeting in person. Bessi, who is on Lost In Space & Time, I just came across on instagram. We chatted a bit and I sent her some ideas and what she sent back was just so perfect. I get to meet and talk to a lot of people through running the labels, and just from being around the scene in London for nearly 15 years now. Tamar Osborn is one of my favourite musicians here, her playing and knowledge is incredible and a collaboration felt long overdue, to me at least. The Omar collaboration was really just a wish and a hope, I reached out and we managed to connect. I remember the first time I saw Omar playing live, when I was probably about 16 or 17, which is 25 years ago now. He’s been an inspiration to me since before then. Being about to write with him is beyond a dream come true.
When I work with anyone I try to leave the landscape open. It’s really important to me that the artist gets to express themselves fully, and then we find our way from there.
How do you manage balancing working as an artist and running a label?
It’s no harder than the majority of independent artists balancing work and art. It can be difficult but there are benefits in both directions too. Being an artist at the label hugely informs how the label runs and understanding what our artists want to talk about and need. The people the label brings me into contact with grows my artistic family and feeds back into the collaborations. There are times when I want to be able to focus on finishing records and the label work just won’t end. But I made my first two albums in full-time employment, so I used to write and produce between 8pm and 3am every night. I don’t have to do that so much now, but the financial security is gone, so it’s all a balance.
What do you feel has changed in the music scene, for better or worse, since you started making music professionally?
However unpopular streaming is, it has improved things massively from my perspective. When I started professionally around 2005 vinyl was virtually dead, there were no streaming platforms, there was no bandcamp, national radio was difficult to get a foot in and P2P music sharing and piracy sites were in full flow, probably the predominant way to get digital music. Other than myspace, the internet was pretty fragmented for music, connecting with people who might buy or support was incredibly difficult for a new, independent artist with little funding. Making and releasing records felt like a shot in the dark. Aside from the CD sales reports, which were really small numbers in my case, or seeing how many times people had illegally downloaded tracks, you had no idea really, if people were listening. As a solo artist, funding a band to tour and play live was really difficult for me, even with a full time job which would have been the other way. As time went on, the live scene was hit harder and harder too. We used to talk a lot about it clearing out any pretenders and money chasers and leaving the true music lovers. Having not experienced the better times at the end of the 90s, what’s happening now (well, prior to covid and the government throwing art and artists to the wolves) feels overwhelmingly positive. It’s really viable as an artist to set yourself up as a small business, to create records as good as you would have previously in a studio, to distribute internationally, to organically grow a following by releasing music consistently, to connect with the community worldwide and with people who care about your music and through a mix of bandcamp and distributed sales and streaming, to begin to make money. Quickly in fact.
What instrument or piece of studio equipment couldn’t you live without?
I’ve really boiled all my studio equipment down to essentials lately, so I feel like everything I look around at here is that. Apart from my computer and soundcard? I do so much in the box, from a processing point of view, these days. I would be lost without them. I’ve done time with hardware and understand the importance of making the commitments you made when recording with hardware, and I carry that into my thinking with the digital too. I like to make firm commitments as I go, define the music as it is made. So other than my Universal Audio box, which I love deeply it’s probably either the Juno 6, which I have on a long term swap from Dave Koor (he has my Fender Rhodes) which goes on almost everything I make, or my avantone monitor for mono mixing which makes every single mix so much easier, completely readjusts your head to be able to switch to this single little source and hear what’s really going on.
What have been the biggest influences in your career so far?
Dom Servini is one of the biggest. I knew so little about the contemporary jazz and soul scene before meeting Dom. He introduced me to people who have been pivotal in my career and growth and put me in the middle of the whole thing in London early on. So many important friendships and collaborations stem from that to this day and continue to happen. And just so much great music I’ve been introduced to through him.
What’s the best piece of advice you have ever been given?
This did the rounds for a lot of people a while back but came for me at an important moment when I was leaving full time employment to try and make a go of production and the label. Don’t expect inspiration to just fall from the sky. Be at your desk, be working, developing yourself and your skills, do something to grow yourself as an artist every day, create the environment in which inspiration can come and flow freely and in which you can get the most from it when it does come. Every hour I put into a mix or a writing session is time that makes me so much better. It’s essentially “practice makes perfect”, but it really does. My studio space is my work space and I sit down to work every day, as if someone was paying me to (imagine) and since I began treating it like that I’ve grown so much in my understanding of the art I work in, but also about myself, what I’m missing, where I need to improve and how I can do that.
What are three new tracks/albums (by other artists) you’d recommend someone to listen to?
The recent album by Lido Pimienta, Miss Colombia is incredible.
Self serving, but the new Huw Marc Bennett album on my Albert’s Favourites label is amazing and I had the pleasure of mixing it too.
And the new one by Ego Ella May, Honey For Wounds, is essential too.
Thanks for your time.
*****
Scrimshire ‘Believers Vol 1 is out 13 November
Pre order here https://scrimshire.bandcamp.com/album/believers-vol-1
Tracklist:
- Anadwo (Tonite) feat. K.O.G.
- Where Are We feat. Stac
- Lost In Space And Time feat. Bessi
- Chance Me feat. And Is Phi
- Transformation feat. Tamar Osborn
- Tanto Tiempo feat. Penya
- Love Is Loving feat. Omar, Xana, Faye Houston
- Peaceless Peace
