“Poet Richard Price, Musician and Producer Roberto Sainz de la Maza, Singer Elisa de Leon. Recorded in a small studio in west London, a set of love songs, political songs, and something more mystical — Zen?” This short, self-description of The Loss Adjusters is like their debut album, perfect. And, like their music, it sounds familiar, yet you question why it works so well and so differently. Is it Richard Price’s poetic lyrics and haunting voice or Roberto Sainz de la Maza’s masterful production and orchestration or perhaps its Elisa de Leon’s inspired vocal contributions and rhythmic flourishes? The truth is, while you debate the effectiveness of the trio’s work, except that they have found a magic formula and it works…Zen? The title of their album is The World Brims, also the title of their first single which came to our attention some while back. We raved and invited Richard onto the show to talk about what we considered a marvelously different, yet extraordinarily accessible song. From that time until now we have been keeping tabs on The Loss Adjusters, eagerly waiting to get our ears around their debut album. Although we were already familiar with a couple of new cuts, the album as a whole is (as already noted) perfect. It didn’t take a lot of consideration to invite Mr. Price back onto the show. Our request went out, but intrepid Scotsman was rambling around on the Isle of Skye with his young son and Internet access was minimal, if at all. So, as soon as we knew the wandering poet was back in London we quickly scheduled a Zoom chat. As you will hear (and see) our conversation was certainly a happy one. Lots of smiles all around, even though at times we talk about dark and serious topics. The main thrust of our chat was to focus on the album, The World Brims, you’ll hear Richard’s passion for the music and the collaboration with his fellow bandmates. About poetry, Richard Price insists it is about three Ps Praise – Politics – Planet. On life in our world now, he barely hides his rage as he says, “We should never have been in the situation where we are protesting because the police are killing black people. What sort of society requires protest before anything would happen!” Then, talking about music, Richard tells a story of being in Lisbon, Portugal, and hearing music emanating from a record shop that he just had to find out about. It was a Tuareg group, from the southwestern edge of the Sahara desert, named Tamikrest with the album, Kidal, named after their hometown. His enthusiasm for this compelling music intrigued us so much, we have included a cut in the show. As our title says, despite covering some of the darker sides of life, this was a happy conversation and we hope you will enjoy it.
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