"I'm Lost, Please Help Me" Part Three

A mid-career reshuffle

Does an artist need to be a little bit predictable for you to trust them?

Do I have to know where I’m going for you to follow me?

I know you can love an artist or band but not love everything they do. But when their next album goes up on pre-order and you haven’t heard it yet, how many do you support without even thinking? And what got you to that place?

By 2025 I was really wrestling mentally and emotionally with the inconsistency and inability to build something up with my Scrimshire project.

Listen to the first single from Bring Our Light To Every Corner

“The next record is guaranteed to fail”

Listeners (2019): vinyl sold out, loads of radio and press, it even made money… exciting!

Believers Vol. 1 (2020): tanked – garage full of vinyl, losses.

Nothing Feels Like Everything (2021): sold out, maybe my most successful record to date.

Paroxysm (2023): tanked – garage full of vinyl, more losses.

Music for Autumn Lovers (2024): happy days again.

This “one good, one bad” experience tracks back through my Wah Wah 45s albums too: Along Came the Devil (2009) – tanked; The Hollow (2011) – happy days; Bight (2013) – sunk without trace…

It’s become comedy to me. I joke to Sas about it… “next one is guaranteed to bomb.” She doesn’t laugh at the joke yet, but give it a few more albums.

By this trend in fact, Bring Our Light To Every Corner is headed for the skip (please, people, prove me wrong).

Impossible questions

So, when I asked Ben (Benjamin Smith, Echo Empire) to help with this confusion, I told him I was tired and I was giving the Scrimshire project a couple more years. After all these years I didn’t feel I could keep committing such a big part of my life to something that was never going to support me, my family and my future. I couldn’t blindly keep expecting a better outcome and this lifetime dream to come true.

I asked: Am I confusing people with inconsistent sounds across my records? Am I losing trust from supporters in that process? How can I find consistency in all this?

And: with some help on direction, a bit more discipline and a willingness to compromise on my own ideas, can I turn it around into a sustainable business?

I was prepared to do whatever it would require to mean I could continue to commit my life to it.

Can a dream come true after all this time?

Ben’s instinct was to lean into tracks with more space, the instrumentals. Celebrate my own writing and production, let it breathe, be more stylistically consistent and understandable.

From the 30+ tracks he picked six for one album and another five (including an 18-minute orchestral piece) that would be a follow up. We cast off a lot of music.

But in his own words:

“It sounds like a singular artist/composer’s vision. It’s very bold and ambitious.”

Old friends

Between July and October 2025 I set about finishing this instrumental album.

I called Chris Boot back to record drums on two tracks. I asked my old friend Jake Telford, who played on my first album, to record soprano sax on two songs. I asked friends old and new to fill out choir parts and little instrumental moments I’d originally demoed myself. From Rob Hynd, one of my closest friends who’s been in bands with me for 25 years, to Daudi Matsiko, through to Jay Brown a.k.a. False Idah, who I started producing for in 2025.

I wanted this album to be anchored in everything that came before and everything I was now.

I wanted to keep asking for help, I wanted that to shape this record.

I mixed and mixed and mixed again, every track on the album until I knew I’d done the best work I could.

By September I was certain it was the best sounding record I’d made in my life, but…

When I finally stopped to take it all in, there was a weird problem.

Not having vocals made absolute sense. The album felt unified; it felt understandable; it gave space to the music and the listener.

But I weirdly didn’t love it.

I didn’t feel emotional about it. And I have to love it, right?

For the second time in this process there came a big lesson: There’s absolutely no point in doing this if I don’t make a record I love with all my heart.

I can handle the records tanking when they’re released, the important thing is that I believe in it and express my ideas fully.

I needed this experience in order to learn that truth again.

I had to follow the trail, I had to listen to someone else, trust in someone else, go all in, to the end of the road and discover what mattered most.

I’d like to live in a world where we can make art and make money, together

But when it comes down to it, making music I love is the priority. I’ll get a job if I have to.

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Anyway, in the spirit of indecision, I mixed AND mastered three versions of the album (upside-down-head emoji). One without vocals, one with some vocals and a version with all the original vocals. I checked them repeatedly to decide which was the one…

And I sent it out to a selection of my favourite, appropriate record labels. I began nervously, for the first time in my life, the wait-for-the-rejection game.

By now of course, you know an offer for this record didn’t come, despite some nice acknowledgements. And so in March this year I unexpectedly ended up, at short notice (for reasons I can’t say), putting a June release date in the Albert’s Favourites schedule.

And we finally decided on which version to release.

Do your favourite artists stay stylistically consistent? We all like to think we’re open minded and excited for new things, but do you like, just a little bit, to know what you’re getting?

Please Help Me

This is the bit where I ask you.

At 8pm on Wednesday 3rd June I’m doing an online Q&A and production walkthrough, live in my studio, for an exclusive new track from the album. Click here to get your invite.

I’d love you to be there and connect more with the music and me.

I release these albums myself, on my own label - I do the marketing, work with the PR, create the content, work with distributors, do the accounts.

Everyone who engages, by sharing, listening and most importantly by buying contributes to making these records and continuing this journey.

You can pre-order or pre-save Bring Our Light To Every Corner now (vinyl via Bandcamp, Sounds of the Universe, Phonica, Juno, Banquet Records and more), or just as good, ask your local shop to order copies in. We love record shops. They can contact me or our distributor Prime Direct Distribution.

BUT simply by engaging, leaving a comment, making the experience human, here and on other platforms, it makes it all seem more possible to navigate.

And in the meantime, here is the first single from the album. Fourteen minutes and fifty five seconds of something I’m really proud of.

Adam

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