Hope For Men Below: Adam Stafford in interview

In 1939 Glasgow was served by 114 cinemas containing an impressive total of 175,000 seats. As the city’s population dropped and television sets became relatively affordable, many of these picture houses were converted into bingo halls or furniture salesrooms, but the majority were simply flattened. One that has survived – or its frontage at least – is the Ascot, which still proudly stands facing Great Western Road, next to Anniesland station. Its impressive art deco foyer has been preserved and is now used by people going to and from the modern apartment blocks that have replaced the auditorium.

You may think that living in such surroundings would provide a regular source of inspiration for any resident filmmakers, but Adam Stafford admits that he’s stayed here so long that he now barely registers the fact it was once a cinema. For mental stimulation, the 31-year-old instead looks to his home town of Falkirk, one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution and still home to some heavy duty commercial enterprise.

In 2009 Stafford directed The Shutdown, a multi-award winning short film written and narrated by the novelist and fellow Falkirk native Alan Bissett. The film told the story of an accident at the Grangemouth petrochemical plant that seriously injured Bissett’s father and the emotional impact it had on his family. The human cost of industry is an important theme for Stafford. It directly influenced the choice of subject matter for his next film, more on which later.

But the principal purpose of The Skinny’s visit to the Ascot one bright summer evening is to talk music, not cinema; specifically the album Imaginary Walls Collapse, due for release this month. Walls is Stafford's fourth album as a solo artist (if you discount his excellent mini covers LP, Music in the Mirabel) and his first for the Edinburgh independent label Song, by Toad – home of such other singular artists as Meursault and Sparrow & The Workshop.

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"It’s the kind of pop I’d like to hear in the charts" – Adam Stafford

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For a man who runs his own label, Wiseblood Industries (which has released singles by the likes of PAWS), he explains that the motivation to work with another was simple. “The big reason was money and exposure. Matthew [Young] and Ian [Greenhill, Song, by Toad's honchos] have a really great track record and a good relationship with the music community in general," he suggests. "I’m just excited to be bringing it out on a ‘proper’ label. With Wiseblood, I’m trying to make it a more physical label in the future, instead of digital as it has been for the past few years. It’s only been a digital distribution platform for me and my friends – whereas Song, by Toad have a distributor, they press all of their stuff either on CD or record, and they are really well-connected in the radio and press industry. It just seemed like a no-brainer.”

That link-up is already reaping benefits, with Please, the first single to be taken from Walls, receiving airplay from BBC 6 Music – a first for Stafford. But the album almost never saw the light of day. Despite attracting numerous glowing reviews for his last, Build a Harbour Immediately, and steadily building a reputation as a unique and engrossing live performer, last year Stafford seriously considered quitting music for good. 

“I think I was going through some mad funk,” he exhales. “I kind of get... not self-doubt, but exhaustion. I ask myself 'how long can I keep going and not progressing?' The fact Walls is coming out on two labels [Song, by Toad in the UK and Kingfisher Bluez in North America] is a big deal for me, it feels like a big progression. The support tour with The Twilight Sad [in 2010] was a big point. I could finally take the music out to others. Their audiences were just the right kind of people for that. But it’s the in-between parts that are difficult. Like, if I’m not recording, or if I don’t have any blocks in place to make that progression, I start to think: 'what the fuck am I doing?' Any musician that doesn’t make a substantial living out of playing live or recording probably thinks the same too. But the reason I didn’t completely quit is that Matthew and Ian had said ‘We won’t allow it! Do the album and we’ll sort something out.’ And I also got a phone call from RM Hubbert, which was really nice, when he said [deadpans]: ‘You should probably continue.’”

Stafford describes Walls as sounding like the “cousin” of Harbour. “The noticeable difference is the lack of acoustic instruments, whereas Harbour had a few downbeat acoustic ballads, this one doesn’t at all, it’s all quite propulsive and electric.”

Working with long-term musical collaborator Robbie Lesiuk, the record again showcases a quick-thinking artist with a talent for taking looped guitar effects, beatboxing and sharp hooks and combining them to create a sound that’s occasionally challenging but always satisfying – as well as being strangely addictive. “It’s the kind of pop that I’d like to hear in the charts – slightly subversive and quite catchy with melodic hooks. There was a definite drive to try and make songs more simple and instantaneous.”

Before turning solo, Stafford was the driving force behind Y’all Is Fantasy Island (YiFi), a band that many felt never received the recognition they were due before they called it a day in 2010. YiFi fans will be pleased to know that a future reunion has not been ruled out, but there are no definite plans for one as yet.

In the meantime, Stafford has more than enough projects to keep him busy. In addition to promoting Walls, which will be launched with a duo of gigs at Edinburgh Art School's Wee Red Bar and The Glad Cafe in Shawlands on 5 July, there’s the small matter of his forthcoming film, No Hope For Men Below. 

Stafford revealed in The Skinny in 2009 that he and Bissett would follow The Shutdown with a short film inspired by the 1923 Redding pit disaster, in which 40 men were killed at a coal mine two miles from Falkirk. After initial funding fell through, the project never made it past the development stage and was shelved indefinitely. But then Stafford was given a shocking reminder that this was still a very real and contemporary issue in the UK. “There was a pit disaster in Wales in 2011 (at Gleision in Swansea Valley, in which four men were killed), caused by flooding – almost exactly like Redding. I thought: this is still relevant – nearly 100 years later, it’s still happening in small communities. Men are still putting themselves in danger in this way.”

With Bissett tied up by other commitments, Stafford approached Falkirk poet Janet Paisley, the mother of an old school friend. “I emailed her asking if she would be interested in writing a poem based on the Redding disaster. She was recovering from a stroke at the time, which she had about nine months earlier, and she replied saying she had not written anything in more than a year, but this sounds like a great idea – but I’m worried I’ll let you down. I think she was on the verge of saying no. The poem that she produced was just fantastic. One of the things she did say, her one clause, was that the poem would be written in broad Scots, as she doesn’t write in English anymore. And I thought, well, it will either sink the film or it will make the film, it will be the unique thing about it. I think it was worth taking the risk.”

Filming in a Fife mine shaft, ordinarily used to train members of the emergency services, gave Stafford a revealing insight into the working life of a miner. “It was a little glimpse into what these men had to put up with. The actors were completely cramped up. And to think that this was your job for ten hours a day for five to six days a week, with the added paranoia of the safety of it, the risk of collapse… I mean for fuck's sake.”

No Hope For Men Below has been submitted to various film festivals around the world, in the hope that it will be selected and then potentially picked up by a distributor. Regardless, Stafford plans to arrange a screening of the film in Falkirk for the relatives of those who died at the No. 23 pit all those years ago. “I was concerned that they were going to turn round and ask ‘what is this?’ but they have been really incredible, the support they’ve shown has been great.”