Monday 21 September 2009

Wry beautiful and bizzare

Musician and DJ Adam Ficek is best known for his day job as drummer in the notorious British rock act Babyshambles.

As a member of the Peter Doherty-fronted band, Adam has seen the best and worst of life at the casualty-laden core of the music industry.

What many people don't know is that he is an artistic talent in his own right. Adam was born in Bletchley, Milton Keynes and over the years has amassed an impressive repertoire of musical skills.

He plays the guitar, piano, vibraphone, accordion, flute, trumpet, harmonica, tin whistle, recorder, and – of course – drums.

He knew Babyshambles' former manager James Mullord and ex-guitarist Patrick Walden from the time the three spent together in and around London's Old Street area.

Much of what followed (the albums, the gigs, the arrests, the tabloid scandals, the burnouts and triumphs and tragedies) is already modern pop history.

Roses Kings Castles is the moniker under which Adam performs and records his own unique catalogue of quixotic, chiming, and astute acoustic pop songs.

Lost somewhere between Belle & Sebastian's pastoral warmth and the hallucinatory six-string invocations of Syd Barrett, a typical Roses Kings Castles track is buoyed by the finest elements of classic British song writing; by turns wry, beautiful, and bizarre.

Originally conceived as an outlet for Adam's 'need to create my own ideas when Babyshambles were on holiday,' Roses Kings Castles quickly became something more than a means of occupying himself whilst on hiatus.

He says: 'I continually write, whether it's big band arrangements, electro riffs or folk-pop songs. I just needed an avenue to walk down.'

No comments: