Bipolar Sunshine

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Knock it down!

Calls for Park Street car park to be demolished and rebuilt underground – with housing or shops above CAMBRIDGE’S ageing Park Street multi-storey car park should be knocked down and replaced with a new one built underground, the city council has been told.

But shoppers must not be left without alternative spaces while construction is under way – or fewer spaces when the new car park is finished, business leaders have warned.

The 390-space car park was opened in the early 1960s, and

CHRIS ELLIOTT ChrisElliottCN

concern is growing about its deteriorating condition.

Experts at the Guildhall have been looking at three options – repairing it, rebuilding it as a multi-storey, or building a new underground car park with housing and/or commercial premises above it.

What should be done to the car park? Comment at cambridge-news.co.uk

The council has just completed a month-long consultation exercise, asking car park users, residents and businesses which option they prefer. More than 800 responses came in, as well as 64 from businesses, thanks to help from Cambridge BID, the body set up to promote the

city centre.

The majority of those who responded felt that going for a new car park underground was the best idea. If it was built, it would probably go down three levels, providing 250 spaces.

Councillors and officials will now evaluate the consultation’s results and decide what to do.

Cllr Kevin Blencowe, execu-

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This week’s entertainment highlights

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THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

Sure, he’s rescheduled his Cambridge gig, but no matter, we’re still rather fond of Bipolar Sunshine. He talks to Ella Walker about the highs and the lows, hedgehogs and doing what he loves

Editor: Ella Walker email: ella.walker@cambridgenews.co.uk For breaking entertainment news for the city, visit cambridge-news. co.uk/whatson Follow @CamWhatsOn on Twitter

Bipolar Sunshine: ‘I didn’t have a plan B. I just went all out’

Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | October 9, 2014 | 27

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC FASHION ICON: Adio Marchant, otherwise known as Bipolar Sunshine; inset, the Carpenters, who were a big influence on the young Adio

‘I

WAS working for my uncle making grills for gold teeth,” says Adio Marchant – aka Bipolar Sunshine – with a reluctant laugh. “We made them for like Rihanna, so it was pretty cool.”

He adds: “It was just a bit of fun that enabled me to write.”

Well, it’s definitely a different kind of way to make time for scribbling down lyrics.

And it worked, the 30-yearold singer songwriter now spends his days a long way from grafting gold teeth.

In fact, when we speak, he’s got a whole day of “doodling and writing notes” planned ahead of a studio session, followed presumably by scouring stores for his next brilliantly gaudy vintage shirt (he’s more than a little bit hipster, and makes excellent eyewear choices), or watching football. He’s a massive Man City fan.

Creating tracks that loop with hooks, thrum with piano and soar like mellow pop songs with a soulful edge should, Marchant’s love of music began at home in Manchester.

“My mum’s always played music from the start,” he says, explaining how he grew up listening to her Carpenters records as well as reggae.

Then, as a teenager, many of his friends turned to MCing. Things accelerated from there. “Hanging around with different people who introduced me to new styles, just opened my mind up to where I am now,” he says.

“Where I feel like I make music that I just really enjoy.”

Of course, in between that came his time as a vocalist in Manchester urban six-piece Kid British. They called it quits in December 2012 after five pretty successful EPs, at which point Marchant made the leap and went solo. “It was a decision I had to make.”

It was this lull between the group and his solo stuff taking off that the gold teeth business

Bipolar TICKETS Sunshine, Cambridge HOT WHAT’S ON Junction, Friday, 11 TICKETS WHAT’S ONApril HOT (rescheduled from Saturday, October HOT TICKETS WHAT’S ON 11) at 8pm. Tickets £11 from (01223) 511511 or junction.co.uk.

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took his fancy. “I wasn’t really writing,” he recalls, with a lazy drawl. “I was working in Nottingham and I bumped into this guy called Jazz Purple who’s a producer. From there we started to make music and he gave me the confidence to feel like I could do this by myself.

“Other things happened,” he sighs, pausing to explain how Purple wasn’t the only one who gave him the push he needed. “Things happen in people’s lives. My grandad passed: he was a very influential figure to me – he really spurred me on to follow what I wanted to actually do

and not worry about anyone else’s preconceptions.

“That’s where my fight came from,” he says forcefully.

“And I just love making music.”

So far that love, that fight and that passion has got him supporting slots with the likes of Haim, Pheonix, Bastille and Rudimental, as well as numerous festival gigs. He played sets at Bestival and Huntingdon’s Secret Garden Party where (while eating the best fish finger sandwich of my life), I watched him coolly takingg in the spectacle of a p

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‘My grandad passed: he was a very influential figure to me – he really spurred me on to follow what I wanted to actually do and not worry about anyone else’s preconceptions. That’s where my fight came from’

28 | October 9, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

Calling myself ‘Sunshine’ is my way of offering that light-at-the-end-ofthe-tunnel type of attitude that I think all great music does From page 27 fancy dress wedding (weddings – fake ones – happen A LOT at SGP).

Now based permanently in London, Marchant took on the name Bipolar Sunshine because he “wanted something that really left it open for people”, and was largely down to the freedom it gave him “to write about the highs and lows without feeling like I had to stick to a certain genre or style”.

He is tricky to pin down musically.

Single Where Did The Love Go, is a case in point. Analysing a situation in which a girl clings on to a guy who clearly isn’t good for her, it shifts between lyrics that shred your emotions, to basslines and chords that just make you want to dance (“I see you, darling/Eyes looking like you had a fight with the rain”).

Marchant’s favourite song to play live is the angst-laden Fire (which bizarrely uses clips from ultra-weepy The Notebook; talk about emotional): “Just because it captures everything I’m about really.” Jangling chords roll around the spoken word delivery of lines like: “Sat in a puddle of regret/ Staring at a smashed plate”.

It’s definitely more on the bleak and serious side of the musical spectrum.

But in fact, he – and his music

What are you listening to at the moment?

I like to switch it up, so a bit of Paolo Nutini’s album Caustic Love and this American hip-hop guy called Travis Scott.

I’m just rotating around those.

– is often fun, or uplifting at least.

Take the video for Deckchairs On The Moon, it was basically an excuse to legitimately hang out with a hedgehog in Tenerife, and film it: “Haha, yeah, the hedgehog. He was nice, proper cute.”

That’s where the ‘Sunshine’ bit of his moniker comes in.

It’s his way of “offering that light-at-the-end-of-thetunnel type of attitude that I think all great music does. [It] gives you that little bit of hope at the end of it,” he says. “I’m just a vessel making music that hopefully speaks to a lot of people.”

His reviews have been mixed. The Gig Review said of his Bestival set: “The nature of the music meant that most were unsure whether to try to dance to the oddly timed beats or sing along to the

obscure lyrics. There was a whole lot of shuffling and mumbling going on.” And The Guardian’s called him “cheesy”. But Rudimental are fans people, and they know how to spot talent.

The fact is, Marchant’s sound is as fluid and hotchpotch as his inspirations. While his “mum is the greatest inspiration just for her general hard work”, his musical heroes are an eclectic crop, from old favourites The Carpenters to Nas (“he was the first rap artist that I fully got into”), Prince and Outkast (“Anyone who wants to make music should really listen to their catalogue,”).

He’s not a music snob either, quite happily shouting, very uncoolly, about how much he loves Adele all over Twitter.

To date he’s released three EPs: Aesthetics, Drowning Butterflies and Where Did The Love Go,

Follow A dio on T @bipola witter rsunshin e.

NO SNOB: Adio cites Prince as an influence and is quite happy to tell all his Twitter followers how much he loves Adele

while he made his latest single, Future (Part 1) featuring Goldlink, available as a free download in September.

Where’s the album, you ask?

That’s what we’d like to know too. Originally planned for early 2015, there have been rumours it would see an autumn release, but now everything’s up in the air after Marchant posted the following statement on his Facebook page: “Unfortunately I have to reschedule my upcoming UK headline tour until March 2015. I’m working really hard to get my album finished and this means fully committing. I hope you guys will understand. I really want to give you the best album and the best tour I possibly can. I gotta lot of love for you guys so bear with me as next year tour and album will be everything I want you guys to have. X” And that’s why his Cambridge Junction gig, due to take place this Saturday, has been put back until April next year. The hope is the album won’t see any more setbacks.

You see, if he doesn’t get a grip on the album – which no doubt he will – Marchant doesn’t exactly have a back-up plan. “I didn’t have a plan B, I just went all out. I’m just going to be here once, I may as well try and do exactly what I wanna do, if I can, and enjoy it,” he says matter of factly.

So what has been the craziest moment so far?

“We shot a video called Deckchairs and the Moon in Tenerife. The view was so amazing, having to go so high up in the mountains above the clouds. I think just looking down the scene was just mesmerising,” he remembers, audibly smiling. “I think that’s one of those moments I’ll always remember as ‘wow’. Two years ago I was writing songs in Jazz Purple’s bedroom and now we’re here doing stuff like that.

“I’m just grateful.”