Jamie is Jim. Let’s clear that up straight away.
No easy feat to follow up 2005’s Multiply, which garnered many fans and an astounding collection of superlatives still ringing across the world. That album, Jamie’s second solo, caught most of us off-guard. After a decade of electronic experimentation that had brought him from underground techno to the science-funk of Super_Collider (with Cristian Vogel), and into his blistering live show, few people expected Jamie to make an honest-to-goodness soul and funk record. Jamie had let those classic influences fuse with his own deeply felt songwriting, meticulous production skills, and most of all, that flipping voice.
Hard to believe that the bespectacled self-confessed music nerd who’d grown up fetishising samplers and boxes that went squelch, could belt it out like a Berry Gordy discovery circa 1961. And if you’d seen him live there was another glimpse of the old Jekyll-Hyde routine. Slyly self-deprecating gent becomes relentless sonic showman. The audience were there to dance, and now the man wrapped in gold lamé is crooning, spluttering, laughing, transforming words into sounds, noise into signal, a body-rocking beat conjured out of nowhere, and then over that, a rousing harmony. On the edge between control and chaos, Jamie turned music inside out �" and it was an exhilarating experience.
Multiply, by contrast, was steeped in the sincere effort of its creator to write ten great songs. Music to switch on the morning. A soundtrack to sunshine. It was as if after letting off so much manic, deconstructive steam in the live shows, Jamie was free to carefully put it all together in the studio. He was coming back around again.
Along with plaudits, critical comparisons to musical legends came flying. According to the reviews, Jamie was at various times, Little Richard, Jimi, Otis, Sly, Prince, Marvin, Stevie or some mashed-up combo of them all. Fellow musicians got their people to contact his people: last year Jools Holland tinkled ivories with him on later; Sir Elton declared himself a fan; Feist sought him out as ‘Energy Arranger’ (and background vocalist) for her hit album, The Reminder; and Beck brought Jamie along to record with him and to join his massive US tour.
And now here comes Jim.
Jim is ten very different songs. Jim is energy, integrity, emotion. Jim is all about the hooks. Jim is putting on a great show. Jim is getting the sounds absolutely right. Jim is keeping things fresh. Jim is the voice. Jim is Jamie and Jamie is Jim.
“With Jim, I’ve put the brackets around my schizophrenic outpourings,” says Jamie. To help him find the balance between the spontaneous creativity of his raw ideas (usually sung into a mobile phone on the move) and the careful craft and polish of a great record, he needed the right collaborators. Mocky is back (after working on Multiply), co-producing and co-writing many of the tracks with Jamie. Gonzales’ dynamic piano is a vital component throughout, and you’ll also hear percussion from Alex Acuña of Weather Report fame, as well as backing vocals from Peaches and Nikka Costa among others.
Jamie took rough demos from Berlin to the studio of producer Justin Stanley (Beck, The Vines) in Los Angeles, and that’s where the music was recorded before heading back to Paris and Berlin to do vocals and mixing. “I learnt a lot on Multiply, to hone it down and keep it as fresh as possible, but it was done in a bedroom studio and I didn’t want to repeat that.” The sound of Jim is certainly richer and more refined, “The most important thing was the vocal, to capture the balance of me delivering the songs with full gusto, and at the same time retaining the grain and the grit.”
Bird-song and an up-beat gospel groove kick things off on Another Day, the most gloriously wise and positive song ever to be written whilst ripped on Laphroaig whisky. Wait For Me, a track road-tested extensively live, continues the gospel flavour, motored by a pounding Gonzales piano riff, and is lyrically “one for the gypsies.”
The alternately sweetly soulful and fiercely impassioned Out Of My System came from “someone saying to me after a show, ‘You look like you’re getting something out of your system’ and I thought I could use that”. All I Wanna Do is the album’s “main course”, a slow-burning ballad gradually building up to a beautiful harmony-drenched crescendo. The poignantly sung lyric, “paint back the colours/ like the green in your tree”, was a late addition, inspired loosely by William Burroughs.
Little Bit Of Feel Good (the first single), a funked-up writing collaboration with Andre Vida, is a “dedication of a love with a sensory backdrop”. Unusual instruments flesh things out, including a talk-box and a Moroccan coconut flute, an example of some of the humorous touches that percolate through Jim - “I wanted to add lot more Sesame Street this time”. The deep synth-and-percussion driven disco-funk of Figured Me Out is elaborated out of a ‘sound-shape’ which Jamie was obsessed with; the lyrics were part-inspired by a literary detective novel by Ryu Murakami; and legendary percussionist Alex Acuña was enlisted to enhance the groove - “Justin (Stanley) has a massive phone book and he knows exactly the right people to call.”
Launching into the stratosphere with a heavy rock riff, the storming Hurricane is the album’s “taste of fast food alongside the haute cuisine.” “Hillbilly funk is the sort of thing Parliament used to do, and it’s been off-limits for so long, so I decided it was time to put it back on-limits.” Green Light centres on a tremendously sweet, genuinely uplifting and instantly memorable chorus. The track’s lyrics are written for Jamie’s young nephews - “It’s my advice to the kids!”
Penned by Gonzales, Where D’You Go, reaches back to a thumping early R & B sound, with Jamie fearlessly “digging in” to the wailing chorus. The haunting vocal for Rope Of Sand, the album’s conclusion, was recorded in Berlin with the studio window doors thrown wide open on an audibly windy day. It’s a touching, delicate song that points Jamie in an entirely new direction yet again.
While the influences that infused Multiply are still present and correct on Jim, it’s a bolder, more promiscuously diverse album, with Jamie restlessly shifting across gospel, disco and even folk, and that chunk of ‘hillbilly funk’ thrown in for good measure. “I prefer to think of it as timeless material,” Jamie says, “I haven’t tried to hide the influences. This is the music I love.”
Live in 2008, Jim is going to require a very new approach to performance. Jamie’s been experimenting with different musical combinations, looking for a band that can reflect the vibrancy and richness of the album, whilst allowing the songs to breathe differently each night. Its clear that the live Jim experience will be something very special indeed
No easy feat to follow up 2005’s Multiply, which garnered many fans and an astounding collection of superlatives still ringing across the world. That album, Jamie’s second solo, caught most of us off-guard. After a decade of electronic experimentation that had brought him from underground techno to the science-funk of Super_Collider (with Cristian Vogel), and into his blistering live show, few people expected Jamie to make an honest-to-goodness soul and funk record. Jamie had let those classic influences fuse with his own deeply felt songwriting, meticulous production skills, and most of all, that flipping voice.
Hard to believe that the bespectacled self-confessed music nerd who’d grown up fetishising samplers and boxes that went squelch, could belt it out like a Berry Gordy discovery circa 1961. And if you’d seen him live there was another glimpse of the old Jekyll-Hyde routine. Slyly self-deprecating gent becomes relentless sonic showman. The audience were there to dance, and now the man wrapped in gold lamé is crooning, spluttering, laughing, transforming words into sounds, noise into signal, a body-rocking beat conjured out of nowhere, and then over that, a rousing harmony. On the edge between control and chaos, Jamie turned music inside out �" and it was an exhilarating experience.
Multiply, by contrast, was steeped in the sincere effort of its creator to write ten great songs. Music to switch on the morning. A soundtrack to sunshine. It was as if after letting off so much manic, deconstructive steam in the live shows, Jamie was free to carefully put it all together in the studio. He was coming back around again.
Along with plaudits, critical comparisons to musical legends came flying. According to the reviews, Jamie was at various times, Little Richard, Jimi, Otis, Sly, Prince, Marvin, Stevie or some mashed-up combo of them all. Fellow musicians got their people to contact his people: last year Jools Holland tinkled ivories with him on later; Sir Elton declared himself a fan; Feist sought him out as ‘Energy Arranger’ (and background vocalist) for her hit album, The Reminder; and Beck brought Jamie along to record with him and to join his massive US tour.
And now here comes Jim.
Jim is ten very different songs. Jim is energy, integrity, emotion. Jim is all about the hooks. Jim is putting on a great show. Jim is getting the sounds absolutely right. Jim is keeping things fresh. Jim is the voice. Jim is Jamie and Jamie is Jim.
“With Jim, I’ve put the brackets around my schizophrenic outpourings,” says Jamie. To help him find the balance between the spontaneous creativity of his raw ideas (usually sung into a mobile phone on the move) and the careful craft and polish of a great record, he needed the right collaborators. Mocky is back (after working on Multiply), co-producing and co-writing many of the tracks with Jamie. Gonzales’ dynamic piano is a vital component throughout, and you’ll also hear percussion from Alex Acuña of Weather Report fame, as well as backing vocals from Peaches and Nikka Costa among others.
Jamie took rough demos from Berlin to the studio of producer Justin Stanley (Beck, The Vines) in Los Angeles, and that’s where the music was recorded before heading back to Paris and Berlin to do vocals and mixing. “I learnt a lot on Multiply, to hone it down and keep it as fresh as possible, but it was done in a bedroom studio and I didn’t want to repeat that.” The sound of Jim is certainly richer and more refined, “The most important thing was the vocal, to capture the balance of me delivering the songs with full gusto, and at the same time retaining the grain and the grit.”
Bird-song and an up-beat gospel groove kick things off on Another Day, the most gloriously wise and positive song ever to be written whilst ripped on Laphroaig whisky. Wait For Me, a track road-tested extensively live, continues the gospel flavour, motored by a pounding Gonzales piano riff, and is lyrically “one for the gypsies.”
The alternately sweetly soulful and fiercely impassioned Out Of My System came from “someone saying to me after a show, ‘You look like you’re getting something out of your system’ and I thought I could use that”. All I Wanna Do is the album’s “main course”, a slow-burning ballad gradually building up to a beautiful harmony-drenched crescendo. The poignantly sung lyric, “paint back the colours/ like the green in your tree”, was a late addition, inspired loosely by William Burroughs.
Little Bit Of Feel Good (the first single), a funked-up writing collaboration with Andre Vida, is a “dedication of a love with a sensory backdrop”. Unusual instruments flesh things out, including a talk-box and a Moroccan coconut flute, an example of some of the humorous touches that percolate through Jim - “I wanted to add lot more Sesame Street this time”. The deep synth-and-percussion driven disco-funk of Figured Me Out is elaborated out of a ‘sound-shape’ which Jamie was obsessed with; the lyrics were part-inspired by a literary detective novel by Ryu Murakami; and legendary percussionist Alex Acuña was enlisted to enhance the groove - “Justin (Stanley) has a massive phone book and he knows exactly the right people to call.”
Launching into the stratosphere with a heavy rock riff, the storming Hurricane is the album’s “taste of fast food alongside the haute cuisine.” “Hillbilly funk is the sort of thing Parliament used to do, and it’s been off-limits for so long, so I decided it was time to put it back on-limits.” Green Light centres on a tremendously sweet, genuinely uplifting and instantly memorable chorus. The track’s lyrics are written for Jamie’s young nephews - “It’s my advice to the kids!”
Penned by Gonzales, Where D’You Go, reaches back to a thumping early R & B sound, with Jamie fearlessly “digging in” to the wailing chorus. The haunting vocal for Rope Of Sand, the album’s conclusion, was recorded in Berlin with the studio window doors thrown wide open on an audibly windy day. It’s a touching, delicate song that points Jamie in an entirely new direction yet again.
While the influences that infused Multiply are still present and correct on Jim, it’s a bolder, more promiscuously diverse album, with Jamie restlessly shifting across gospel, disco and even folk, and that chunk of ‘hillbilly funk’ thrown in for good measure. “I prefer to think of it as timeless material,” Jamie says, “I haven’t tried to hide the influences. This is the music I love.”
Live in 2008, Jim is going to require a very new approach to performance. Jamie’s been experimenting with different musical combinations, looking for a band that can reflect the vibrancy and richness of the album, whilst allowing the songs to breathe differently each night. Its clear that the live Jim experience will be something very special indeed
