Anphortas is the music project of Sheffield based musician, painter, fencing coach and guitar maker Adam Blight.
It has always been my experience that songs sort of dropped out of the air, whether I wanted them or not. Even in my dreams I get songs. At times in the day when I felt an urge to sing, it would more often than not be one of these songs I would sing to myself. Mostly, I hear the lyrics, often also the drums, backing vocals, and even sometimes the whole thing. What was I to do with all these songs?
It was not really my plan to be a musician but I had always had guitars (except when I’d run out of money), and jammed a bit with friends. By and by I got interested in all the music things computers could do. At first I recorded vaguely ambient pieces using, samples, improvised guitar and various music making programs. Bit by bit as I got to know more of how to do things, I started working on my songs more and was taken over by the drive to make them more real and tangible and to get recorded versions that sounded how I could hear them in my mind.
After school I studied fine art and was, for many years, a painter. Making music was very much the same, I could sit alone in the corner of my room with guitars, computers, mics and other gear creating music, just the same as sitting before an easel making a painting. Also like the process of painting, are all the frustrations, anxieties, emotional battles, highs and lows. A territory I knew pretty well and had learned to some extent how to navigate.
I am pretty satisfied with how the recordings turned out, they seem to sound how I imagined the songs would. More than anything it’s the lyrics that I value and they are front and centre, often I went for an atmospheric and sometimes amorphous quality to the musical backing, though some of the songs benefited by having a more driving and percussive backing so musically there is I suppose quite a range on the album. I still have loads more songs waiting to be ‘made real’ and I am looking forward to getting on with that. Although everything on this album, singing, all the instruments and everything else was done by me I sort of imagine Anphortas as being a band. Perhaps it will be in due course.
Anphortas 