Jamie Lidell

I think I made a note to write about Jamie Lidell a couple months ago, just after I had seen him perform at the Beats, Breaks and Culture festival at the Harbourfront. That day, he came out on stage dressed like Frankie Wilde, sporting a housecoat and what looked to be slippers. The early part of the performance was amazing; starting most songs off beat-boxing, laying down track after track into the sampler, and singing overtop of this. This style is not unheard of, but very difficult to pull off. Normally, if you loop a mistake in there, it sounds bad over and over. Jamie is really good at creating these layered funk grooves and adding in soulful back-up vocal lines.

The ‘singles’ off Multiply (Warp, 2005) were less interesting to see live. It seemed like he just pressed play on his tape machine, and took off with the mic. I guess I was hoping to see how a live band would pull off tracks like ‘Multiply‘ and ‘When I Come Back Around‘.

On the plus side, Gonzales joined him on the keys for a couple tracks.

I was reminded about Jamie Lidell while checking out the coolest thing since sliced bread. Check out NEAVE.TV. This is totally going to replace television for me. (Except for Leaf games). Check out the video for ‘New Me‘ by Jamie Lidell. Pretty cool stuff.

Jamie Lidell