Adamski – from chaos to ‘Killer’… [September 1990]

Adamski’s Killer was one of the stand-out tracks of 1990, topping the pop charts for a month, and helping to launch the solo career of Seal.

For the man behind the track Adam Tinley, the route to dancefloor success came via a somewhat discordant route, as he told Simon Reynolds in The Observer, in September 1990 – in the mid 80s, Tinley was part of Diskord Datkord, a Dadaist pop group whose performances regularly ended with the band stripping naked.

“Johnny Slut was ultra-camp and manic, a cross between Cilla Black and Robocop,” Tinley recalls, in the article archived by Rock’s Back Pages. “My brother’s role was sampling bits of what we were singing and hurling it back at us. The rest of the music was on tape. Our show was an extravaganza of visual and aural chaos. Most of our gigs culminated with the promoter pulling the plug, and us trashing the venue as a reprisal.”

Post Diskord Datkord, Tinley, an accomplished keyboard player, would go on to play live at raves, as the scene began to develop.

“I started playing on the scene simply because I was going to raves a lot. I wanted to contribute something. It’s true that I’ve always wanted to be a pop star, but I also just chanced to get into the scene, like a lot of others. A lot of pop stars have emerged from it.”

As for the follow up to Killer (whose B-side, The Bassline Changed My Life, is also well worth a listen), Tinley released The Space Jungle, in which he channelled his inner Elvis.

While not as memorable as Killer, the quirky single still achieved Number 7 in the UK charts, his last single to achieve such lofty heights.

[Kudos to moonfloated for the YouTube upload]