In Colour
A wondrous debut from the house producer of indie-pop romantics The xx, *In Colour* is the sound of dance music heard at helicopter height: beautiful, distant, and surprising at every turn. Whether summoning old-school drum ’n’ bass (“Gosh”) or dancehall-inflected pop (the Young Thug and Popcaan double feature “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)”), the mood here is consummately relaxed, more like a spring morning than a busy night. Laced throughout the thump and sparkle are fragments of recorded conversation and the ambience of city streets—details that make the music feel as though it has a life of its own.
In Colour, Jamie xx’s full-length solo debut, is the dazzling culmination of his last six years. On it, he gathers up elements of everything he’s done—moody ballads, floor-filling bangers, expansive and off-kilter collaborations with vocalists—and packs them tightly in a glittering ball that reflects fragments of feeling back at us.
Anyone who heard Jamie xx’s “All Under One Roof Raving” last year knows that The xx percussionist has a reverent curiosity in before-his-time ’90s rave culture. Anyone who checked out his 2011 remix of Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here (titled We’re New Here) also got a sense of his strong interest in fusing R&B styles…
While his band the xx have always been an exercise in restraint, Jamie xx's compositions have expressed a little more exuberance and, yes, c...
While what made The xx so special was the trifecta of vocalist, bassist, and producer, it was the latter, Jamie Smith, who was always destined to take his skills elsewhere.
The xx’s producer reconfigures old-school house on a nuanced debut album that strips the genre of its laddishness
Review of 'In Colour' the new LP by Jamie xx. The full-length solo album from the xx member Jamie Smith, comes out on June 1st via Young Turks.
Jamie Smith’s debut is a little more playful than the xx’s hushed minimalism and flirts with being overly tasteful