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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