Jamie Lidell Gets Dirty With Wilco, Beck, Feist ... Everyone!

Honestly, the genesis of Jamie Lidell’s Compass sounds like a big ol’ clusterfuck. Traveling through numerous studios, starting with Beck’s Hudson Studios, Lidell collected a group of collaborators including (but certainly not limited to) Beck, Feist, Gonzales, Nikka Costa, Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear and Wilco’s Pat Sansone. Like a nomad Lidell jammed with them all, collecting sounds here and there, and then hunkered down to make sense of it all.

The result is an album that is certainly informed by the clear-eyed soul that has informed Lidell’s more recent recorded work, but it’s injected with a healthy dose of distorted chaos. This could potentially turn off some of Lidell’s fans, but we found ourselves excited by his rougher new direction. It seems as if Lidell is trying to meld some of the more random aural tendencies that happen as a byproduct of his one-man band appearances with the more structured attack of his full-band shows. What we end up getting is an update of Philly Soul as it would sound erupting from a warehouse buried deep within some industrial corridor.

Compass is out today and Jamie Lidell plays this year's Lollapalooza festival

Check out the video for "The Ring" off Compass after the jump