Album: Barry Adamson

The King of Notting Hill, Mute

If there were any justice, Barry Adamson would be as celebrated as his label-mate Moby; but while both composers' work has been used to score TV commercials, Adamson's lacks the direct, simplistic tone that makes Moby such a favourite with ad-agency "creatives". As The King of Nothing Hill demonstrates, he requires a much broader, widescreen backdrop on which to project his musical cine-scapes, which in this case operate at the point where blaxploitation merges into film noir. The opening "Cinematic Soul" is a slice of euphoric soundtrack funk in the Curtis Mayfield/Isaac Hayes tradition, all groovy organ, wah-wah guitar and slippery horns, while the steamy "Black Amour" finds Adamson in Trouble Man mode, his Barry White bass murmur oozing erotically over a symphonic soul glide: "Satisfaction Jackson/ If I ain't on the money, it's because I'm in traction" – a wry reference to the hospital treatment that has dogged him for years. "Whispering Streets" is a spaghetti-Western noir shuffle in the Morricone mould, and "Le Matin Des Noire" a Left Bank fantasy whose noodling organ, vibes and fingersnaps pursue an Archie Shepp/John Coltrane sample down darker alleyways. All 10 tracks are vivid evocations of the kind of heightened emotional experiences one used to get from films, before they became just excuses for special effects.