Here's looking at you kid by Sam King From playing bass with Magazine and the Bad Seeds - Barry Adamson has graduated to making soundtrack music for films that don't even exist! Sam King investigates this: radical departure

He was 18 and had just quit a graphics course when someone gave Barry Adamson a bass guitar.

It was an inspired move. Two weeks later he joined Howard Devoto to form art rockists - Magazine.

It was in the days of punks - when everyone felt very inspired and there was the idea that you could do anything you wanted.

"The bass I was given only had two strings on it and it was while I was buying the other two that I saw Howard's ad."

Since the demise of Magazine - Barry spent several years working with Nick Cave as part of the Bad Seeds - before recording his first solo album - 'Moss side Story' and the single which preceded it - 'The Man With The Golden Arm'.

Both are musical soundtracks designed to reflect Adamson's love of the work of such people as John Barry and Elmer Bernstein.

The single was magnificent - a luxuriously textured summation of the Intensity and underworld glamour of Otto

Preminger's film. Tightly arranged by Adamson - and featuring the work of Marc Almond collaborators Annie Hogan and Bill McGee It's a musical recreation of Sinatra's struggle against heroin.

'The Man With The Golden Arm' came out of an appreciation of Bernstein's work on the original - which I thought was an 'excellent piece of screen composition - really exciting - almost flawless. whole thought It would bee good way to kick off what I'm doing now.

"It's pretty far removed from the original 'though - I've taken bits from the whole movie - rather than just the theme - and put the together with a couple of improvised themes so that It Incorporates all the dimensions. all the action of the movie."

It's like a compacted version of the album - which is structured to accompany an imaginary film created by Adamson 'Moss Side Story' a deft play on West Side Story - Is the soundtrack to a life that Adamson never had - which he describes as being based "loosely - hardly at all" and alternatively "quite a lot" on his own experiences growing up in the area. 'Moss Side Story' also pays homage to films of the '40s and '50s - as well as to those of the present day with titles like 'The Swinging Detective' and 'Round Up The Usual Suspects'.

'Round Up The Usual Suspects' comes originally from Casablanca when Claude Rains says it to cover up the fact that Bogart has shot the German officers.

"During the LP I was looking for a piece that would allow me to throw in a couple of red herrings - like the yardie sub-plot - because It's obvious that - at the beginning - there's a murder being committed. so I thought I'd call it 'Round Up The Usual Suspects."

His new solo material is a radical departure. His previous experience of film music amounts to a couple of disastrous advertising jingles ("At the end I just wanted to go - F*** off - to them") and a five minute piece of Derek Jarman's The Last Of England.

Did Adamson find it strange that he'd done this?

"Bass was just a way into music - Once Magazine got going. I was looking out for music that genuinely inspired me and I became very attracted to the whole soundtrack idea - it's something I want to follow - something more - something outside of ordinary rock 'n' roll."