Main Phase: Family Man
Photography: Lorna Dee
It’s mid-February and the ATW Records co-founder is in Paris for an appearance on Rinse France, his family in tow.
A mystical glow pierces a white blanket sky in Paris on this Sunday. Adam, aka Main Phase, has his infant daughter perched on his lap as he sits on a green double-panelled bench under an evergreen tree outside Chez Janou. The ivy-covered bistrot is hidden down a quaint side street away from the crowds that occupy Place de la Bastille, a nearby square. As he notices me walking over, he claws the back of his daughter’s jumpsuit, handing her over to his girlfriend beside him. He stands to greet me with his hand outstretched and a smirk on his face.
“Are you busy now?” I ask.
“No,” Adam insists. “I was just having lunch with my girlfriend, my baby, and my friends.” Adam's girlfriend waves over at me as she sits on the bench tending to the child.
“Shall we walk towards Bastille?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll just say goodbye.” Adam briefly converses with his girlfriend in Danish and parts with a kiss to mother and child.
We begin walking down Boulevard Beaumarchais under a foray of sprouting leaves. Talking over heads and weaving in and out of the crowd, we frequently turn sideways to make ourselves smaller to fit through the slightest space given by oncoming pedestrians.
“I always forget that you're Danish,” I admit, “because of your association with all the UK guys.”
“I think loads of people don't know I'm Danish,” Adam says.
“Are you firmly based in Copenhagen at the moment?”
“Yeah, we live there. I live and work in Copenhagen. I was thinking about moving to Manchester, but it's tough with the baby.”
“Not to get too serious too soon, but how did that even come about, the kid?”
“Covid thing, innit,” Adam says, turning to me with a big, wry smile.
“Was it a shock, so to speak?”
“It was a shock, in terms of, my music is going upwards. And we've been talking before about how this is going places and I don't want to stop it, but at the same time, it's tough to balance. It's a tough balance, innit.”
“I can imagine.”
“Because, like, obviously I would love to do both things full time, but that's just impossible. I say no to quite a lot.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Because of the kid?”
“Yeah, ‘cause like, I want to play some gigs, but I can't play every Thursday, Friday, Saturday abroad. I can do Copenhagen and Denmark recently. But I can't go overseas. It feels like it at least.”
We cross the pedestrian crossing over to Place de la Bastille where a crowd has gathered and broken into splinter groups, talking among themselves. We stand next to the towering blue-green Colonne de Juillet, assessing if this protest is brewing or dying. But a protest never truly dies.
“You know when a genre is defined by the place that it came from,” I say. “We've seen Chicago house be appropriated or Detroit techno, but UKG still seems particular to the UK.”
“Very much so,” Adam says.
“So then, how do you, as being someone from Denmark, be careful not to be the outsider stealing their thing, almost.”
“I feel like, obviously you need to pay respects, but at the same time it's just boring if you're trying to copy the whole thing.”
“Yeah, of course, of course.”
“I've never thought about that actually in my production, but I've thought about paying homage to El-B and the pioneers. But I feel like it's important to also just move on.”
“And you also don't want to be gatekeeping too much.”
“Nah, nah, nah. And there's just bare old heads hating on the new wave and I'm just like, 'Get a fucking grip.' You know what I'm saying?“
I laugh at his forthright rebuttal.
Adam lights a cigarette as we each settle down at two white stone benches bordering Place de la Bastille, only for a huge crescendo to come from the protest.
“We might have to move,” I say.
“What are they protesting?” Adam asks.
“I don't know.” — I try to discern the cause — “I don't recognise that flag. Look, another day in Paris, another protest.”
“Was there a protest yesterday? I saw a big crowd here.”
“There's always one. They love a protest.”
“There seems to be a lot of police,” Adam says, as we walk by the burgeoning crowd.
We cross the road connecting Place de la Bastille and the popular Sunday market at the head of Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. Adam sees a kid on his bike, his back wheel unwittingly jutting out onto the road, making it impossible for a police van to get by him. “I rate this guy. Doesn't give a fuck.”
We follow the path that wraps around Bastille and find ourselves walking down Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, aimlessly, but fond of its calmer cadence and clear pathway.
“Because of the UK influence,” I continue, “would you be passionate about the Copenhagen scene?”
“It's where I'm from and I love Copenhagen,” Adam says, the crowd noise dampening as we walk further away from Place de la Bastille. “That's why I think I never moved to the UK, because it's just so wonderful in Copenhagen for being a creative person. But the scene in Copenhagen is lost, man. It's lost to techno and trance. There's just no way back, because it's so good. It's so good, the Copenhagen trance and techno vibe.”
“I've never been there, but my vision of Copenhagen is that it's very expensive.”
“It is very expensive,” Adam asserts.
“So how do you survive as an artist?”
“The way to survive in Copenhagen, is just the welfare system is incredible. I've been living off welfare cheques for a year and a half at one point. Freelancing here and there, doing music.”
“Have you grown up around that system?”
“Yeah, I grew up in a very secure household. My mum and dad were — I wouldn't say rich — but I would say very comfortable. So, there was never that worry. I think that's also why garage and grime were never formed in Scandinavia.“
I laugh.
“Obviously it came from struggle, innit.”
“Yeah. Exactly, exactly.”
“I've had a bad feeling once where I felt I was capitalising off of people's struggles,” Adam says. “Obviously in the UK, it's tough. It's a tough life.”
“That's what I was even saying earlier. Do you maybe want to be a little bit careful not to be seen as this guy appropriating the scene almost?”
“Yes, definitely. That's why I'm very happy that I feel I've found my own way and I see people from the UK looking up to me and that's been very important to me to —”
“— To gain their respect?”
“Yeah,” Adam says. “I've had thoughts about not appropriating and not trying to copy anything, but just trying to conceptualize it and make it my own thing. And then having people from the UK look up to me and tell me that I'm doing a good job—” He pauses to think. "—It's like the check on that list.” He pauses again. “I don't know how to put it really, but I have had thoughts about that, definitely.”
“Even listening to you, you have the English slang.”
“I've been there so many times. At the minute I'm in the UK every other weekend.”
A few hundred metres up Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, we veer onto a side street and we settle on the chirpy terrace of La Fontaine for a drink. "Un cafe au lait, s'il vous plait,” Adam kindly asks the server. His French and black turtleneck top render him congruent with his surroundings. I take a glass of water. The server quickly returns with each.
“With Zach (Interplanetary Criminal),” I say, “you're seeing him doing his thing as well, and you're almost intrinsically linked. When you mention Interplanetary Criminal, you're mentioning Main Phase. You're seeing him go on his trajectory as well and it must be such — I don't know — a nice feeling that you're doing this with your friends.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“And you're all coming up together, almost.”
“And that's a really important point that needs to made as well. I'm seeing some old heads, not to name anyone, but I'm seeing some old heads hating on the new wave and what's so weird is that the new wave is literally a bunch of mates just having a good time. Do you know what I'm saying?”
“Yeah.”
“We're not ripping anyone off. We're just building off of a legacy. And no one is saying it's not good and no one is saying it’s not a legacy, people are just elevating, you know? That's a key word, mate.”
I laugh.
“It's just me, Bluetoof, obviously Zach, Cosworth, Dr. Dubplate, Breaka, Frazer Ray as well, and even young kids like Bakey. Everyone is doing this together and we're just having so much fun. And I think that the family vibe that it almost has is just unmatched. You can't match that. That's a big part of why things came up.”
Adam takes a sip from his cup, while I take a moment to consider all that he has told me thus far.
“So, you're working, you're gigging, you've got a family to take care of — how are you finding the time to produce?”
“I'm not, mate. I'm not finding the time,” Adam says, with that characteristic smirk.
“Oh, yeah? Ok.”
“I'm just not finding the time. I try to go to the studio at least once a week.”
“And did your daughter’s birth lead to a change in mindset of what you're doing with your music? Do you think it's something that you now have to take less seriously or more seriously? If you know what I mean?”
Adam gathers his thoughts, swirling a spoon around his cup. “That's tough to answer because I've never thought about that. But maybe it did. In a way it did because, like, I think my work rate actually went up because there's no messing about. When I go to the studio now, I know it's precious time. And when I go to the UK to play gigs, I know my mindset is like —”
“— You're not allowed to hang around.”
“Exactly. So, obviously a huge chunk of my constant thought is with her, you know? So, yeah, it changed my life big time. But, I think music has always been such a big part of my life, that no matter what happens — and I feel so bad for saying this — but no matter if you get a kid, it's still just so important to you that it never really transcends that, but now that's just another big thing, you know?”
“Yeah, I get you.”
“I like to think of it as something has been piled on top.” He holds his hands out shoulder width apart. “It's not that you have this amount of space and you need to shrink it in order to make room for something else. I just feel like the space just gets bigger.”
“Your responsibilities are now —”
“— It's just bigger, innit.”
“But you're ready for that.”
“Definitely.”