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Singer, songwriter, producer and label director Adam Scrimshire is not new to the music game, but it was 2011's The Hollow, his second solo album, that really got him noticed. Now preparing to release his third album, Bight, Scrimshire looks to have grown further still and have even more to offer listeners.
Earlier releases were characterized by a distinctly jazzy vibe, but Bight portrays an artist who is both progressing into new territory and returning to their origins.
"I've gradually been working back to what I started with, which was synths and beats," Scrimshire explains. "When I released The Hollow in 2011 I was already amalgamating that sound into live breaks and more traditional stuff I was doing, but now I think I've transitioned backwards even more."
While Scrimshire has been eager to get back to his roots for a while, he also wasn't given a whole lot of choice, when he lost his basement studio while moving house, forcing big changes in his production methods.
"I lost the studio so all the drum kits and big equipment went and I went back to making music in the corner of a room with keyboards and synths."
Watch the premiere of new video 'Convergent' below
Scrimshire is a veritable one-man-band, crafting his music almost entirely alone. His last album even left some people wondering why he hadn't credited all the musicians on the record, but, as Scrimshire explains, "it's because it was me playing the instruments."
The Hollow brought wide-spread critical acclaim, and was named Album Of The Week by BBC6 Music. For many artists the pressure of such an achievement would be crippling when it came to the follow up. But Scrimshire says instead of daunting pressure, his previous success spurred him on and gave him confidence in the decisions he was making.
"I'm a massive control freak, it's important to my process and progress that I do these things alone. I think maybe I still feel like I have something to prove to myself about what I can do and achieve. To have people fall in love with The Hollow in the way they did just made me feel like I was making the right decisions.
"I'm very used to working alone and have done for a long time, but I think maybe I'm just now getting to the point where I'm ready to work with other people."
Bight does indeed show an increasingly confident artist at work, with bold shifts from dark to light, surprising breaks into hip hop style rhythms and a general tone shaped with careful consideration.
"It's a record I always envisioned in a club setting, but I can also definitely see us taking it to festivals and it fitting there as well," he says
Watch the video for 'Home' ft Faye Houston below, taken from The Hollow
Both as Scrimshire, the artist, and Adam Scrimshire, Wah Wah 45s boss, the man has plenty ahead of him this festival season. Wah Wah are taking a host of artists to Soundwave in Croatia and the small but perfectly formed Southern Soul festival in Montenegro, but a lot of the bigger UK festivals have left him fairly unimpressed.
"I get that everybody wants to see some of the big, classic names," he says of Glastonbury.
"But I think it's a shame that there're not as many new artists getting as much exposure as maybe they should. I think that's a general thing across a lot of festivals, this need to have 'heritage' bands as a way of bringing in audiences and justify the money people are playing.
"Glastonbury are going back to rock this year, aren't they? Perhaps after being criticised for putting on Beyonce and less conventional acts a few years ago. I'm not desperate to be there, and I'm not really a headline stage man anyway."
Bight is released on May 27 through Wah Wah 45s, with a launch party at London's Old Queens Head on June 6.
