Inarguable Pop Classics #10: Adamski Feat Seal - Killer

Inarguable Pop Classics #10: Adamski Feat Seal – Killer

220px-Adamskikiller‘Solitary brothers/ Is there still a part of you that wants to live?”

I remember being quite entranced by the otherworldly and quite surprising Adamski video for ‘Killer’ being piped out on Top of the Pops for the very first time as a kid in 1990, when it had just shot straight to number one. First there was Seal – a striking looking black man, statuesque, dreads and leathers and the possessor of a voice that was both soulful and quite uniquely powerful. In a mirror of the Pet Shop Boys set up, he’s backed by Adamski, a silent professor of acid house, concocting future sounds in a backwards cap.

While the video was like some prototype Sci-fi, the free rotating heads, the spaceship backdrop, heart monitor machines, the digital effects on green screens, it was like looking at a ZX Spectrum game colliding with rave culture.

Not to mention the soundtrack ‘Killer’ which is a stone cold pop classic, a shuddering dancefloor beat with synths and inventive laser sample breaks that sound like they have beamed down from the Star Trek Enterprise. While Seal delivers a vocal that’s part unifying force part dystopic cry: it’s still his finest moment as a vocalist.

God is in the TV is an online music and culture fanzine founded in Cardiff by the editor Bill Cummings in 2003. GIITTV Bill has developed the site with the aid of a team of sub-editors and writers from across Britain, covering a wide range of music from unsigned and independent artists to major releases.