In Waves

This album has been added to 4 public lists:

• 

  2024 Top 20

  Adam Wood

  Jamie previously garnered a spot in my top ten for his only other solo outing: In Colour (2015). The nine year wait for a follow-up has been made both easier and more difficult by the arrival of a third excellent record from The xx in 2017, and his bandmate therein—Romy—taking third spot on last year’s list with Mid Air, her miraculous treatise on the ways in which to love is to make oneself vulnerable.

  Romy is but one of several high profile features here (she, and the other 1/3 of The xx, Oliver Sim, essentially making ‘Waited All Night’ a full band cut). Panda Bear helps bring the ethereal sheen of ‘Dafodil’ to life; Robyn (4th back in 2010 for unimpeachable (and undiminished) dance-pop masterpiece Body Talk) adds to the celebratory bombast of ‘Life’.

  But, needless to say, the record’s real power lies in Jamie’s ear for matching melody with beat with sample, and cutting the sum up in arresting, captivating ways. A dive into the macro on how—for example—the illusion of simplicity on ‘The Feeling I Get From You’ comprises halting percussion, minimal piano and multiple samples in conversation with one another… makes one wonder how such a melange can be conducted into something so pristine. Step out another level, and witness the record’s wider tapestry as track after track carries an argument for euphoric acceptance of one’s time and place, from the individual breath (‘Breather’) to the cosmos writ large (‘Falling Together’). But, you know… interspersed with throwback bangers like ‘Baddy On The Floor’.

  Please don’t make me wait another nine years Jamie, or I’ll throw my back out dancing to the next one.

• 

  z0z4

  jzfski 💭

  🇬🇧

  House, Future Garage, Progressive House, Funky House

• 

  2024

  giovana zaleski

  delis! e um dos rolês mais divertidos do ano.

• 

  Best of 2024

  Nat