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| A boundary-breaking, British soul vocalist beyond your wildest expectations,
Jamie Lidell is set to affirm his long-simmering musical ascendancy with his new
album Multiply. With it, he has evolved into a prodigious performer, fusing
elements that evoke several giants of the music world without ever appearing
derivative.
Jamie Lidell has been shocking audiences for the past three years with his
extraordinary live shows; which careen from glitzy Funkadelic extravaganza to
hard electronic avant-garde showpieces. He was top draw at Sonar (Barcelona) and
Ether Festivals (London) of recent years, performing at Ether juxtaposed with
the London Sinfonietta, a bill that has toured to sold out coliseums and major
performance houses across Europe.
A peerless vocal performer; his largely improvised shows have won him
thousands of fans from Belfast to Tokyo. Reviewers have likened him to “a 21st
century reincarnation of Little Richard” with “a soul voice fried in honey like
Sly Stone or Prince, and a beatboxing talent to make Muhammad Ali quake in his
Everlast”, delivering time and again “a thrilling, visceral performance”,
“pure, visceral power: a scintillating display of demented musical and physical
energy”, both “exhilarating” and “astounding”. Jamie Lidell is British music’s
best kept secret, about to be unleashed.
His genre-blending live experience is both captivating and passionate –
building tracks by expertly sampling and layering loops of his voice and
shifting effortlessly from deranged beat boxing to soulful funk. Those who have
witnessed his skills can attest to the exhilarating and anarchic abandon of his
risk-taking, daredevil vocal endeavours. To watch is to be privy to Lidell
harnessing the essence of pure spontaneous creativity.
Be mindful that no Jamie Lidell live performance is complete without visuals
maestro Pablo Fiasco, a scion of the film underground. Using an array of
samplers, cameras, electronic gizmos, costumes, masks, and film and video
projectors, they cut up sounds and images in a pandemonious whirlwind, with
Lidell manipulating and sparring with his own vocals, dressed in a range of
"media suits" – costumes made of video tape, CDs, and even 16mm film. Each
goading the other on to new and wilder heights, theirs is a true multimedia
happening without parallel.
Some may also know Lidell from his previous work in Super_Collider, the
tricksy techno-funk outfil he helmed with Cristian Vogel. A good few will recall
his smokey crooner vocals on Matthew Herbert's Big Band project, where he took
centre stage with the Big Band supporting Bjork, which included dates at Madison
Square Gardens, and the Hollywood Bowl. And hardy warehouse rave survivors will
have happy memories of his role in underground techno assaults in London.
But it is on Multiply that Jamie Lidell has finally come into his own as a
vocalist, songwriter and producer. Upon moving to the creative hub of Berlin in
the early 00s, Lidell quickly fell in with likeminded artists based there,
including the Canadian musician Mocky, who not only encouraged Lidell to follow
his heart when it came to recording Multiply, but became an important
songwriting foil.
Multiply is a pantheon to soul music, a panopoly of melodic styles sparkling
with soulful motifs. Assimilating tender ballads, funk, and dripping with
honeyed street-corner harmonies, Multiply is a work of intensive retrospection,
where Lidell deftly delves into the past and forges something fresh and
uplifting – Multiply is seething with raw power and burning with sensitivity. "What electronic music is lacking," states Lidell with quiet confidence, " is
just a cool song that's not trying to prove anything or compete in a sonic space
race."
The album opens with the funky pop of You Got Me Up: a catchy and
celebratory sunny Sunday morning track that could have been written by Curtis
Mayfield for Sly Stone, Lidell then moves to the title track Multiply with
it's doo-wop backing vocals, and sparse Otis Redding melody and guitar picking.
When I Come Back Around is a post disco pop-dervish that shimmers with 80s
synth keyboards. A Little Bit More is a brooding piece of pulsing sexual
energy, with vocals that sway from falsetto to a simmering R & B where
Lidell expresses his discontent, yet he remains firmly in control.
What Is It This Time is a ballad yearning for a love less complicated, with
Lidell's mystified voice fracturing as he frenetically yelps "WHAT!?" to a
frustrating lover. Lidell the singular figure, twisting the sounds and
rephrasing the question to exhaustive ends.
The ironically titled Music Will Not Last is a beatific blast unashamedly
borrowing from an early Motown palette. And the dark and sinister The City
carries an ominous message held together by a descending bassline underpinning
the lines "the city doesn't like you, it never did, won't stop won't stop, till
it's got you on your knees" while a frenzied pummelling drum propels this
claustrophobic track.
Game for Fools is a beautifully melancholic ballad that perfectly casts
Lidell's voice in a track that stands confidently between Sam Cooke and Al
Green, but the delivery is all Jamie Lidell, with an exquisite mournful upright
bass, played by songwriting partner Mocky.
Jamie Lidell has finally produced a set of delectable songs that highlight
his myriad vocal talents, and these he has burnished with his electronic
production wizardry that happily competes on a level playing field with any name
producer you care to mention. The tracks acknowledge his strengths as a singer,
fitting his voice like a soft glove; sometimes exuding a velvety voiced
confidence, and other times admitting a brittle and very human frailty.
"This time I just want to present my daytime face" Lidell concludes, "to
bring on something that people might want to play when they wake up in the
morning, or at a barbeque.
“Music for a little living and a little loving."
Jamie Lidell press quotes
“but by far the most exciting thing I witnessed
at festival… was a mesmerisingly manic performance by mad dog Englishman Jamie
Lidell. Blessed with a sweetly classic r&b voice, and a passion for
improvising with technology, he sampled and mashed his own singing like a 21st
century reincarnation of Little Richard” Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph (SONAR
Festival)
“a wonder to behold. remarkably for an Englishman in his twenties, he
possesses a soul voice fried in honey like Sly Stone or Prince, and a beatboxing
talent to make Muhammad Ali quake in his Everlast. Lidell constructs his tracks
live, voicing and layering right in front of your eyes, effortlessly whipping
them out of the air and forging them into clanking electro riffs and deathprod
funk grooves. His maniac scat is deployed through vocoder, and his real-time
arranging follows chaotic but gripping patterns.” The Wire (SONAR Festival)
“it was exhilarating in a masochistic kind of way, most of all in Jamie
Lidell's astounding solo performance, which combined ecstatically abandoned
singing with a lightning-fingered performance on samplers and sequencers,
building up polyphonic textures of fearsome violence” Ivan Hewett, Daily
Telegraph (Ether Festival)
“a wired vaudeville act somewhere between crazed disc jockey and furious
music theorist. during his shattering 15 minutes, prince is in bed with
Stockhausen, MTV is shook up by Luis Bunuel and there’s blood and soul all over
the sheets. If Jamie Cullum is the Roy Castle of post-modern showmanship,
Lidell’s the Jimi Hendrix” Paul Morley, Sunday Telegraph (Ether Festival)
“Jamie Lidell digitised, looped and corrupted his voice as he sang and
beatboxed, dressed in a spangly suit and putting on a thrilling, visceral
performance” Independent on Sunday (Ether Festival)
“Lidell's set was pure, visceral power: a scintillating display of demented
musical and physical energy. He transformed his voice, and his body, into a
musical cyborg, sampling vocal riffs and noises that built into textures of
shuddering intensity. His performance was projected on a giant screen with live
visuals by Pablo Fiasco, who placed cameras on Lidell's head and among his
equipment, creating a cinematic experience that was almost as rich as Lidell's
soundscapes. It was a thrilling live performance, both experimental and
immediate. Lidell was the highlight of the evening” The Guardian (Ether
Festival) |
