‘I hate brown sauce’, Adio Marchant comments as we sit down at a greasy spoon in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. He picks up the Heinz bottle enthusiastically. ‘Ketchup works on everything.’ Casually dressed in a black tee and baseball jacket, the former member of Kid British orders himself a black coffee and a full English breakfast. ‘That’s why I wanted to come here’ he says. I notice he’s without his signature old-school specs. He explains how he lost them a couple days in the rain while putting up his hood. In a city as rainy as Manchester, hoods are often a necessity, but the 28-year-old tells me that he’s all about mixing vintage with modern pieces. ‘I’m definitely into what’s happening trend-wise, but I’m not for the whole TLC-look,’ he says. ‘It’s a bit played out now.’

 

As Adio’s full English arrives, we begin to talk about his music career, which began six years ago as a singer in a short-lived band called Action Manky. He and the two other members of the band joined up with another and formed Kid British, who were signed after only five gigs with eight or nine songs under their belts. Adio remembers, ‘We didn’t really know what we were or what we were doing. It happened far too quick.’ He continues, ‘Only in the last four years I’ve taken music seriously. Before that I was just messing around.’

 

For the last six or seven months, Adio’s been working hard at his latest endeavor, his solo project Bipolar Sunshine. He confides, ‘It’s a fresh start for myself, obviously being in Kid British for so long. I started making music late. I want people to hear exactly what I’m all about and exactly what I feel.’ Despite his lyrics depicting dark, twisted love stories, he tells me that he doesn’t want his music to be complicated. ‘Kid British was always social commentary’, he says. ‘This is a lot more personal.’ By putting himself forward so openly, he realises that his music isn’t for everyone, but he prefers it that way.

 

With a projected Bipolar Sunshine EP to release later this year, Adio explains he’s in conversation with two major labels at the moment. For him, Bipolar Sunshine means ‘having faith in whatever you’re doing and not caring about what everybody else is doing’. In a departure from the typical Manchester sound, Adio’s Bipolar Sunshine creates one that is more global, bringing together the irreverence of Kanye, the smoothness of Miguel and the softness of Sampha. But being a true Mancunian, Adio can’t help but reference the classic crooner Morrissey just a little bit.

 

Carol Huston

Photographer - Greg Walsh