Holy. Cow. This was the most amazing show I’ve ever seen. Seriously—Jamie Lidell manages to combine the 2 things in the world that I love best—electronic music and singing. However, he doesn’t make the mistake of doing the kind of singing that normally goes along with electronic music—the ethereal, Portishead-y, St. Etienne-esque chick singing wimpy stuff. Although, I do like Portishead, and it has its place in the world, Jamie Lidell is way more awesome. He sings good, from-the-heart, belt-it-out soul music, a sort of cross between Prince and Stevie Wonder. He had a whole bank of equipment on stage, which I am totally uncool enough to recognize— some kind of drum machine + sequencer and some other stuff. He would beatbox/sing a bass line into the mic, and then loop it to create the background to what he was singing—soulful music (he can really belt it out) with witty lyrics… all of this from a skinny, nerdy English dude with Buddy Holly glasses, wearing a trenchcoat (he later took it off to reveal his polka-dotted dress shirt).
It was just… amazing! It changed my life in some profound way that I can’t exactly put my finger on right now! The way he created the music as he was playing it, and used it as a tool to back the songs he had already written was just, well, kind of revolutionary in my mind. I feel like I’ve been going about music all wrong. Jamie Lidell is diving into music from an angle that I’ve never even imagined—I’ve kind of timidly waded into it from the top down, i.e., my NIN remix that I spent 3 hours futzing with 5 seconds of. He burrows in from the bottom up, while at the same time diving in from the sides, and he creates this awesome layer cake of song and sound. At times he sort of scats into the sequencer, harmonizes with himself, loops that, and then sings a sort of descant over it. I wish I had the vocabulary to describe what the heck is going on! Basically, my naïve little narrow world of music has been broadened once again. Now I have 50 million ideas for things I want to do.
Jared recorded a bunch of soundbites from various sci-fi movies and tv shows that we watched over the weekend for me. I had ideas of some things I wanted to do with those… but now I have completely different ideas. Dammit! There’s not enough time to do all the things I want to do now! I need to take, like, 2 months off and just work on all the projects I have going, as well as the ones in my head.
In short, Jamie Lidell is AWESOME!!! Oh, and the DJ he had with him (Jimmy Edgar) is, like the most beautiful man on earth, and he has really nice hands. Seriously, he was gasp-when-you-look-at-him beautiful. I mean, he’s the most beautiful man on earth after Jared, of course! His set was cool, though a little too cerebral at times for me. I had a hard time figuring out what was going on half of the time–it wasn’t terribly accessible. At least not to me. I enjoyed it, though.
HOLY DOUBLE CRAP—Jamie Lidell is going to open up for Beck on a tour this summer. Holy holy holy cow. In the name of all that is holy and divine, I must see that show!!
