Deep Time: Adam Stafford interviewed

The latest in a towering catalogue of projects from Falkirk’s own Adam Stafford, Reverse Drift is a collection of photographs presented alongside a piece of music that reflects upon them, a continuous forty minute composition made with synths, voice and a loop pedal that takes images as its starting point and spools out into its own strange, enigmatic entity. While the music came after the photos, it’s not a translation of them. Rather, the two arms of Reverse Drift are intended to complement one another, to express in conjuction something about Stafford’s life, about Falkirk, and about decay. 

“I wanted to do an improvisation album for a couple of years now because that's how I write most of my stuff,” Stafford explains. “And then I was speaking to Gerry Loves Records about collaborating with them again – I think Andy (Lobban) and Paddy (Berry) at the label knew that I'd been taking pictures on and off for a few years and somehow the idea of a photobook came about. And then the two ideas kind of merged – the improv album with the photobook.”

A "few years” is an understatement. The oldest photograph included in Reverse Drift dates back to 1999 and began life in Stafford’s high school dark room. That the collection spans eighteen years is just one indication of Stafford’s interest in the passage of time. Almost all the pictures are shot at daybreak or dusk, and in aggregate they comprise an interrogation into these ordinary, yet indelible moments that give a temporal shape to our daily experiences.

The music too, which opens with the sound of a chiming clock, seems interested in the measurement of time. For his part, Stafford hopes the music will offer “a temporal distortion maybe… something that will distort your sense or your surroundings.” Its sheer length alone goes towards achieving that, and has already proven a challenge for some. “I've got friends who I've given the album to and have been like, ‘yeah I listened to the first twenty minutes and it was really good but then I had to go and do something, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to burn it to a CD to listen to in the car and give it more time that way.’

“Which is fine,” he adds. “You know, people have busy lives. Not everyone always has time to sit down and listen to a whole record and that's me included.” But Stafford believes the depth and quality of immersion offered by an extended piece of music is a rare experience worth pursuing. “There's a Boredoms [song] called Livwe!! and it’s about 45 minutes… it's just utterly amazing,” he enthuses. “Maybe I've even ripped it off subconsciously because it starts off with Christmas bells chiming and this choir comes in and when you're listening to it it seems very long, like you've been listening to it for three hours or something. But you can’t get away from it, you're deep in it from minute ten. It really captivates you.”

As with much of Stafford’s previous music, loops are a big part of Reverse Drift and the repetition that comes with that is something else he acknowledges is not to everyone’s tastes. “I can understand why some people hate repetitive music. My mother despises anything that is techno or dance.” But for him, repetition can be revelatory. “I'm of the mindset that the more I listen to a repetitive phrase, the more it starts to give up its secrets or the more that it starts to influence your mood,” he explains. “I find it hypnotic and trance inducing and the more I listen to something that repeats a lot, the more I start to get subdued and fall into that pattern of the phrase.”

So where does the title fit into all of this? Given the prominence of loops, we wonder if Reverse Drift conveys something – concern, maybe – about the notion of repeating oneself, of taking a step backwards. Stafford had mentioned earlier that where we’re sitting is fairly close to a cold war nuclear bunker and, like most sensible people, he’s anxious about the future. “I think we're heading back into those times. It seems to have happened really quickly with Russia and America and North Korea, it's starting to get pretty fucking scary again.”

But his interpretation is more open. “The way that I thought about it was from the fact that in Antarctica, when there's a lot of ice that falls off the ice caps, the ice that drifts out somehow changes the direction of the flow. It flows backwards.” It’s a reassuring image. Certain forces – the daily cycles, the march of time – might push you in a particular direction, but there’s always scope to push against the current.