DO Me A Kindness, the forthcoming album by Edinburgh singer-songwriter Steve Adey, makes a BIG sound. Big as in the sort of soul-shaking, foundations-rumbling sound that Texas trio Lift To Experience (a must-see at Summerhall on August 17) made with their classic Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads album. Big as in provoking a “my God!” from The National by the time its second track, a cover of PJ Harvey’s The Devil, came rumbling from the tattiest of supermarket stereos.

Despite Adey (right) beginning the record shortly after his second album, The Tower Of Silence, a Sunday Times Album of the Week in 2012, unconventional covers album Do Me A Kindness is only seeing the light of day next month.

“Initially I thought this would be a really quick record to make and had the bright idea of going into a professional recording studio,” he explains, “but it didn’t work out.”

Adey took time out to focus on another record of original songs, due for release later next year. The problem, he found, was partly the studio environment. Adey, you see, usually records in churches, spaces created to amplify and resonate.

“It’s a very specific sound and a lot depends on the whole environment,” says Adey, who recorded the album in Edinburgh’s Buccleuch Church. “A lot of effort went into making the acoustics sound great in churches. Mine is an old school approach where the equipment is usually vintage, things from the 1960s and 1970s, when the equipment was really at the peak. We really haven’t got better than that in terms of making it sound rich – we’ve just made things cheaper.”

So characteristic is the sound that Do Me A Kindness is more of a Steve Adey artist album than a covers record. As well as How Heavy The Days, an adaptation of a poem by Herman Hesse, the arrangements are far from typical: opener The Unsigned Painting/Sense Of Doubt sees him ally a spoken word piece by Rickie Lee Jones with a stark instrumental from David Bowie’s Heroes album. It works beautifully.

“I was always really inspired by Rickie Lee Jones’ records, there’s great imagery and atmosphere there,” he says. “I was adding and superimposing things, and I thought this sounded pretty cool, a bold way to begin the album.”

“A lot of the time I don’t follow the melody of the original or the original chord sequences,” he continues, “I’ll just thrown in a middle eight, or structure things around something completely different to the original, stuff you wouldn’t do if you were doing the record in a more straight-ahead way.”

Elsewhere there are interpretations of tracks by Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Portishead and Mary Margaret O’Hara, the latter a favourite of Morrissey whose Everyday Is Like Sunday also features. Slowed to around half the speed of the pop original, its feelings of quiet resignation are all the more intense.

“Slowing things right down is what I often do, but I felt I had to bring something new to it, like all the tracks here,” Adey says.

Like closer River Guard, a genuine treat for fans of the Bill Callahan/Smog original, the Morrissey track features a six-strong vocal ensemble.

“I had already decided I didn’t want anything complicated or too considered,” Adey says. “I just wanted the singers to just sing along. They did it all in one or two sessions.”

Adey makes no apologies for not matching their speed.

“I had the best intentions to do this record quickly but the records do take on a life of their own,” he says. A former professional recording engineer, he admits he can become obsessed with the recording process.

“I’m careful not to overwork things,” he says. “But the time it takes is the time it takes. I am trying to get faster, though.”

Do Me A Kindness is released on Grand Harmonium Records on August 4.

www.steveadey.com