JAMIE LIDELL
www.jamielidell.com
A boundary-breaking, British soul vocalist
beyond your wildest expectations, Jamie Lidell is set to affirm his
long-simmering musical ascendancy with his new album Multiply. With it,
he has evolved into a prodigious performer, fusing elements that evoke several
giants of the music world without ever appearing derivative.
Jamie Lidell has been shocking audiences for the past three years with his
extraordinary live shows; which careen from glitzy Funkadelic extravaganza to
hard electronic avant-garde showpieces. He was top draw at Sonar (Barcelona) and
Ether Festivals (London) of recent years, performing at Ether juxtaposed with
the London Sinfonietta, a bill that has toured to sold out coliseums and major
performance houses across Europe.
A peerless vocal performer; his largely improvised shows have won him thousands
of fans from Belfast to Tokyo. Reviewers have likened him to
“a 21st century reincarnation of Little Richard” with “a soul
voice fried in honey like Sly Stone or Prince, and a beatboxing talent to make
Muhammad Ali quake in his Everlast”, delivering time and again “a thrilling,
visceral performance”, “pure, visceral power: a scintillating display of
demented musical and physical energy”, both “exhilarating” and “astounding”.
Jamie Lidell is British music’s best kept secret, about to be unleashed.
His genre-blending live experience is
both captivating and passionate – building tracks by expertly sampling and
layering loops of his voice and shifting effortlessly from deranged beat boxing
to soulful funk. Those who have witnessed his skills can attest to the
exhilarating and anarchic abandon of his risk-taking, daredevil vocal
endeavours. To watch is to be privy to Lidell harnessing the essence of pure
spontaneous creativity.
Be
mindful that no Jamie Lidell live performance is complete without visuals
maestro Pablo Fiasco, a scion of the film underground. Using an array of
samplers, cameras, electronic gizmos, costumes, masks, and film and video
projectors, they cut up sounds and images in a pandemonious whirlwind, with
Lidell manipulating and sparring with his own vocals, dressed in a range of
"media suits" – costumes made of video tape, CDs, and even 16mm film. Each
goading the other on to new and wilder heights, theirs is a true multimedia
happening without parallel.
NME: "These cuts of cyborg funk fidget
with digital tics and gasps... there's no stopping him"
THE OBSERVER: "...his impressionistic, shape-shifting and authentic album
is nonetheless the sound of 21st century soul coming of age"
DAILY TELEGRAPH: "Jamie Lidell aims to cover all bases from 1960s soul
onwards... With such a strong and versatile set of pipes, the role of devoted
follower suits him as much as mad scientist."
IDJ: "If '60s music soul had been put in a time capsule, spun half-way
round the universe and beemed back direct from the year 3000, it still wouldn't
sound as alien and future-fresh as this."