Barry Adamson (Manchester, 1958), the Black bassist of Magazine and the Bad Seeds, became in the 1990s one of the most cultivated and original composers in Britain, only superficially related to rock music. His atmospheric and melodramatic scores, sometimes for small orchestra and sometimes for chamber ensembles, have made him a kind of small-scale Ennio Morricone of the ambient era.

The EP Man With The Golden Arm (Mute, 1988) revealed his inclination toward film soundtracks, which would indeed become his main activity.

The album that revealed his eclectic arranging style was Moss Side Story (Mute, 1989). Assisted by an exceptional �cast� (including Marcia Schofield of The Fall, Rowland Howard, and Diamanda Gal�s), the composer and director conveys his musical obsessions: bebop, 1940s film noir (the one-act piece for voice and electronics Everything Happens To Me), James Bond themes (the mini-symphony of Sounds From The Big House), rock and roll (Autodestruction), and languid cocktail-lounge melodies (the piano interlude of On The Wrong Side Of Relaxation). The music is composed following an almost overly programmatic process of deconstruction and assembly. In Under Wraps, the nervous saxophone monologue is underpinned by threatening synthetic string phrases (worthy of early King Crimson), upon which a light James Bond�style theme is overlaid. In The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, saxophone and organ engage in a jazz duet under the whip-like strikes of an industrial cadence. The music becomes a stream of consciousness of past sonic artifacts, flowing like a surrealist dream.

The EP The Taming Of The Shrewd (Mute, 1989), the actual film scores for Delusion (Mute, 1991) and Shuttle Cock (unreleased), and later the score shared with Mascis for Gas Food And Lodging, did not repeat the initial miracle, but continued his important exploration of sonic sources.

That exploration bore fruit with Soul Murder (Mute, 1992), albeit from a �post-modern� perspective (meaning citation and manipulation) and with autobiographical undertones (numerous texts, all chilling, somewhere between news reporting and 1960s radio drama). In Split, saxophone, trumpet, piano, and double bass merely �recite� perfectly jazz-like parts, albeit disconnected from each other. Suspicion is a Zappa-esque orchestral overture inspired by TV serials; Checkpoint Charlie uses synthpop methods for the same purpose. Reverie is a romantic new-age serenade for piano and electronics, while On The Edge Of Atonement pays homage to light-music orchestras. Despite the evocative qualities of some passages (especially the instrumental scores), the work is too fragmentary and episodic to be considered entirely successful.

The mini-album The Negro Inside Me (Mute, 1993) further confirms the limits of his approach: in an effort not to repeat himself, and perhaps to reach a wider audience, Adamson incorporates dance-music rhythms, with results that are at best awkward.

Adamson's conversion to dance music was sealed by Oedipus Schmoedipus (Mute, 1996). Its "songs" have replaced most of the "cinematic", noir quality with loud and frantic body movement. However, there is continuity between his imaginary soundtracks and these bodily pieces: Adamson's compositional technique has merely migrated to a different realm. The shuffle Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis is a "collage" of funky beats, soul strings and gospel choir. A more syncopated, quasi hip-hop rhythm, new-agey strings, a jazzy organ and trombone refine Something Wicked This Way Comes. But, soon, the madness takes over the method: Adamson even indulges in the slow, romantic lounge music of The Vibes Ain't Nothin' But The Vibes and in the soul ballad Achieved In The Valley of Dolls.
The experiments make up a secondary album Business As Usual: a sampled phone conversation, pounding drums, shrill dissonances, seven-minute Dirty Barry progression cacophony, ghostly echoes, free-jazz horns, African percussions... a jungle emerges from the desert
Then there's Adamson's passion for jazz, that runs the gamut from the dark, sleepy bebop of In A Moment of Clarity to the grotesque big-band swing of The Big Bamboozle, a cross between Harry Mancini and Frank Zappa.
The only moment of pathos comes when Nick Cave intones the bleak Doors-ian threnody of Sweetest Embrace. The rest is fluff, albeit elegant fluff.

Meanwhile, Adamson finally realized his private dream and became a prominent film-score composer, working on projects such as Natural Born Killers for Oliver Stone and Lost Highway for David Lynch.

His approach to the conventional song format culminates with As Above So Below (Mute, 1998), composed during a period of convalescence. It is the first album of his career in which he sings. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this is also the album in which the theme present in his previous works is sublimated, though rather hermetically: the struggle of the individual against himself. Between Freudian psychoanalysis and Schopenhauerian philosophy, with almost biblical tones and overtones reminiscent of a black mass, Jazz Devil (one of his high points), Deja Voodoo, and Come Hell Or High Water tackle grand systems with the air of someone just returned among the living. Here I Stand almost sounds like Leonard Cohen grappling with Gregorian chant. Both this album and the previous one suffer only from being so fragmented and discontinuous. As is often the case with his albums, it feels more like reading a notebook of notes than listening to a record, and it hardly matters that the notes were taken by a musical genius.

Tragic and restless intelligence, but not negative; fantastic and fairy-tale�like, but not idyllic, Adamson, with his �mind movies� and his elaborations of Harry Mancini, John Barry, and Ennio Morricone, has provided above all a sonic testament to the derelict and anguished urban landscape; he coined a sort of �musique noir.� More than to thrillers, his work recalls the novels of Kafka.
Yet his �faux film� obsession has led him to a career as a �faux auteur� specializing in artistic forgeries. Adamson�s albums are full of stereotypes interpreted in a profoundly impersonal manner, and this is also the fundamental limitation of all his records.

The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion on the EP Motorlab #3 (Kitchen Motors, 2001) is a composition by Barry Adamson and Pan Sonic for Iceland's Hljomeyki Choir. The music is austere and ghostly in the best tradition of Gyorgy Ligeti and Arvo Part. The album includes a remix done by Hafler Trio.

The King of Nothing Hill (Mute, 2002) is another over-produced work of lounge music, that mostly sounds like the orchestral funk-soul sound of the 1970s (Cinematic Soul, Whispering Streets, Black Amour) or the Broadway musicals of the 1950s (That Fool was Me). The sound effects in The Crime Scene make Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon sound like a work of genius. To make things worse, Adamson sings, and his crooning makes you miss even Bryan Ferry.

Stranger On The Sofa (Central Control, 2006) is another product of Barry Adamson the songwriter (as opposed to the imaginary-soundtrack sculptor). Theresa Green, The Long Way Back Again and You Sold Your Dreams are unpretentious melodic and rhythmic artifacts. The instrumentals Dissemble and The Sorrow and the Pity sound more like fillers than the descendants of his heroic soundtracks. The creative jams Free Love and Officer Bentley's Fairly Serious Dilemma offer plenty of ideas but not quite a center of mass.

Back to the Cat (Central Control, 2008) is spineless muzak for the new century: songs (not instrumentals) that hark back to Bacharach and soul balladry. The instrumental Shadow Of Death Hotel provides one of the few moments of relief.

I Will Set You Free (2012) contains even less value (The Trigger City Blues). Know Where to Run (2016) and Cut to Black (2024) were equally bland.