Jamie Lidell Goes Solo Again On New Album
By Michelle Meywes Kopeny in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 9, 2013 2:30PM
Somebody’s got a fever for Prince, and that person is Jamie Lidell. His new self-titled album contains a lot of influence from the Purple One, and Lidell makes no secret of it, saying that when he was a teenager, his “only musical crush was Prince.” Always original though, Lidell puts his own stamp on his latest sonic exploration, mixing genres and combining sounds as he returns solo to the funky electronic style of his earlier work after spending time touring with a full band. Saturday night he brought that new album to Lincoln Hall with renewed excitement, and a huge mirrored table filled with computers, samplers and mixers.
In the recent Sound City documentary, a film that champions the superiority of analog recording, Trent Reznor speaks about technology available to musicians today, and how theoretically, with all these amazing tools, we should be hearing tons of amazing music, but we’re not. That’s not to say that no one is doing groundbreaking work with programs like Pro Tools or ReBirth. Reznor himself is a proponent, creating new and interesting works all the time. Lidell, too, is among the oddities, using programs as tools instead of crutches. It’s known that he is a wizard on electronics (for proof, check out this video of him breaking in the iMaschine app), in fact, the UK native recorded and mixed his latest effort at his new home in Nashville.
Saturday’s set opened with the new tune “I’m Selfish,” and went right to his signature beatboxing and live looping on “A Little Bit More.” A balanced mix of old and new tracks, the high energy set had a smooth R&B segment with “What A Shame” and “She Needs Me,” but the heart of the night was with Chicago house. With several shout outs, “You know what’s goin' on Chicago; you invented this shit, I’m just a student,” he sampled old house like Mr. Fingers’ “Can You Feel It?” After the encore, where Lidell shared the mic with several in the front row on “Multiply,” he took time to meet a long line of fans for an autograph session.