Brighton date as Lack of Afro aka Adam Gibbons offers new direction

SussexWorld

Lack of Afro aka Adam Gibbons headlines Brighton Patterns on October 31 on the back of his new album Love Dealer which came out on October 10, an album which has taken him in a new direction.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers.

00:06Lovely this afternoon to speak to Adam Gibbons, better known as Lack of Afro.

00:11You're on the road on the back of the new album, and Love Dealer.

00:15And it's a special album, but at the moment you're in that funny feeling of you're just about to give it away,

00:21having presided over the birth. It's just about to be released, isn't it?

00:25Yes, it's a funny time because you're kind of, as soon as you release it, it sort of stops becoming yours, essentially.

00:34So then it will just do what it does. But at the moment there's this weird kind of like, don't quite want to let it go thing.

00:39But equally, you know, it would be nice to let it go also. It's a weird, it's an excitement, nerves.

00:45You don't really know what's going to happen with it, so you don't know how excited to get.

00:49Because I mean, you know, nothing's guaranteed. It might be a complete letdown, or it might do very well,

00:53or it might be somewhere in the middle, which is more like...

00:55And also part of that equation is the fact, as you were saying, that you never take it for granted.

00:59You always wonder, could this be your last? It clearly isn't going to be, but it could.

01:04Well, I don't know. I mean, it's a funny one, Phil. I don't know. It's been a long time.

01:08It's been sort of 20 years. And I think at the moment I have no plans to make another one, put it that way.

01:13But then I've said that for the last three albums. So I don't know whether this will be it.

01:18But that's the thing. I think if it is, I think you have to, as an artist, you have to kind of give everything to every album,

01:25because nothing is taken for granted. I mean, people take things for granted now, and I think I'm lucky to release albums, really.

01:32It's an amazing thing to be able to do, and who knows when it's going to end? You just don't know.

01:36So if it is the last one, I'm proud of it and everything that went into it, and we'll see what people think.

01:43And the exciting thing is, it's a kind of change of direction, isn't it?

01:46You're saying it's much more disco, dance floor orientated than previous work.

01:50Yes, it is. It was a conscious decision to kind of break away slightly from the sound that I had before,

01:57mainly because, you know, as an artist, I think, you know, it can become formulaic making music.

02:01This is like album 10 or 11 for me now, so you have to kind of excite yourself and challenge yourself a little bit in order to then kind of,

02:09because you don't really know what you're capable of unless you get pushed a little bit.

02:12So this was uncomfortable for me, but at the same time, I kind of knew that I wanted to do it

02:17because I didn't want to fall into the same sort of, you know, kind of habits that I wrote the last one in.

02:23I wanted it to be fresh and a fresh challenge and ultimately, you know, maybe learn something along the way too, you know.

02:28I think you've got a responsibility as an artist to sort of push and see what you're capable of.

02:32Otherwise, you know, it gets it gets quite boring quite quickly.

02:35So, yeah, just about to push it out into the world.

02:38The feeling is good. The feeling is good.

02:41Yeah, I think I couldn't have done. I don't think I could have done any better given the circumstances, you know,

02:46because you always have to call it as well. There's always a deadline, which is good, I think, for me,

02:50because otherwise I'd just be endlessly tinkering with it for ages and ages.

02:53But because obviously this is what I do for a living, you know, it has to be released in order to, you know, put food on the table.

02:59So there's that as well. You have to call it. And that I'm given that that was the case.

03:03I think, yeah, I'm very proud of it and hopefully it'll do all right.

03:06Fantastic. Well, good luck with the release. You've got gigs coming up in Southampton and Brighton.

03:11Brighton is Patterns on October the 31st. Hope it goes brightly.

03:15Really good to get to you. Thank you.

03:16Thanks, mate. Cheers, Phil. Bye.

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