HE’D HAD his day almost the moment he appeared, hadn’t he?
It’s all very well having a vocation for “finding interesting voices”, but most backroom boys realise that’s precisely where they should be — back in the studio, making the occasional cup of tea, twiddling a few dials and grooving on down during the all-night party sessions. Much as one loves Adamski’s ubiquitous hat, umbrella and dog, much as one appreciates his zany line in blather, much as one realises Seal is crap without him, one can’t help feel he’d overstretched himself the moment he put his name to a record. Killer was way cool, but Adamski didn’t even recognise the fact.
Naughty is okay. That’s it. Okay. Pleasant music to have on in the background when you invite a couple of friends round to play Don Martin’s “Sound Effects” card game (currently £1.75 from Woolies, hepcats!). As wallpaper music goes, Adamski’s a nicely unobtrusive shade of peeling pastel pink, with a few vivid splashes of purple. That’s if you can ignore lame tracks, such as those co-written with Soho and PiL (saccharine smooch and irritating nonsensical rhyme respectively).
The finest moment here is the single, ‘Get Your Body!’, and that’s mainly because when guest vocalist Nina Hagen sings, she seems to do so with a complete disregard for the atypical bleep and bloop of the backing track. Almost as good is ‘Time Capsule’, with its lush voice and violins in sensurround, a panoramic multi-layered splendour. More common, however, is the instrumental chill-out of the Youth bass-led ‘The Sky Is Falling Down’, mirrored in the gentle piano on ‘Never Goin’ Down’, the opening ‘Seq Rok’ and a thousand other pieces composed during long, boring nights at the console.
It’s not even enough to make his dog laugh.
© Everett True, Melody Maker, 16 May 1992