A song on 1995's A Different Class by English band Pulp neatly summarised what was so illusory about dance music culture. Erstwhile indiellectual Jarvis Cocker's pop lyrics provided a sad summary of what it was like to attend a rave alongside several thousand "friends". By dawn the façade crumbles as "I lost my friends, I dance alone, it's six o'clock I wanna go home".
Jamie Smith’s (aka Jamie xx) debut album paints a similarly unflinching picture of the culture 20 years on. The alienation and loneliness are still there all right, but the man behind The xx sound bravely throws his sonic arms around it and something remarkably beautiful happens.
On album opener Gosh, we get an exceedingly satisfying portion of that beauty. It begins with a pretty pedestrian beat and a grimy refrain. It continues to build as Jamie throws some warped handclaps into the mix. Then two minutes in, we get serious, brother. A remarkable bass rises like a sure-thing boxer and is joined by a restrained 303-alike effect. We are heading for the sun. It's an unforgettable slab of controlled, uncanny electronica.
"It was supposed to be the final track on the record, in my head," Jamie insists. It was the last of the album to be completed. "It was much faster. Then I slowed it down by 20 to 30 per cent and the beat sounded harder, grittier somehow. The massive synth line began to kick against it and I started to feel that moment of euphoria I'm always looking for when I'm making music. That is the end goal." If euphoria's what you want, euphoria's what you get in Gosh's cinematic five minutes.
By the time the distorted alarm clock of second track Sleep Sound rings true, you know you're in safe hands. It welcomes in that signature xx soundscape, a deep melody complemented by floating doo-wop vocals, a head rush that hits you in the heart.
Three years in the making, In Colour is a compendium of dance music flavours as well as a consistently woozy acknowledgement of its creator's obsession with melancholia. Amid the breakbeats and nods to grime, there are knowing nods to techno and jungle that manifest as a kind of glum 'n' bass – if such a thing exists.
And this accomplished producer's friends are along for the ride too. Romy of The xx stars on throwback house track See Saw, while fellow xx bandmate Oliver Sim features on Stranger in a Room. The former is something remarkable – a trippy nostalgia-fest that's as fresh as it is reverential. Jamie denies that In Colour is bleak, but he would wouldn't he?
He says: "I wouldn't have called it In Colour if the record had sounded dark. That could have happened." This, from a man whose band have been casting a long, noirish shadow over modern music since the mid-noughties. But the album's title and hard-to-ignore, chatty momentum add weight to his insistence. Indeed, the steel drum melody that sets out Obvs' cheering intention, albeit a dimly lit one, highlights how Jamie's music is cracking a little bit of a smile. Remarking on how he felt when the music seemed to have come together at the end of the three-year process, Jamie says: "It wasn't just a series of unconnected ideas anymore. It was an album. It felt positive."
But does the final product feel positive? It does in parts, but an underlying threat, a chance of danger is never far away, as on the ominous unease of Hold Tight, which ends with a police siren sample. Something bad is happening nearby, it seems to say.
Nothing on In Colour has happened by accident; each second has been carefully drawn to reflect its creator's meticulousness, characterising his weary outlook. "I work and work and work until I drive myself mad trying to find something that makes sense to me," he reveals. "It never sounds good enough. I was pulling my hair out trying to make all this fit together when Gosh happened and pulled it all into one place."
On Loud Places, again featuring Romy, that work ethic and unusual determination to raise our spirits combine perfectly on what is perhaps In Colour's strongest track. It is certainly the record's most uplifting song, with only the hip-hop infused I Know There's Gonna Be Good Times surpassing it for sheer happiness. Romy's elegant, breathy vocal counterpoints a gospel chorus alongside a per-usual xx guitar lick. Loud Places will brighten the corners of many a dance club these coming summer months.
The guest appearance of his xx friends was a no-brainer for Jamie. He says: "We owe everything to one another. I couldn't have made it without them. We know each other so well that we understand we have to do other things." About Romy's role on Loud Places he adds: "The sample [of Idris Muhammed's Could Heaven Ever Feel Like This?] was a last attempt to make Romy's beautiful words make sense. When it slotted into place it was the album's eureka moment."
And when it came to Oliver's input on Stranger in a Room, the process was less complicated. "He works differently," Jamie says. "It's not about trying things out with Oliver. It's about waiting until the right thing happens. But when it does, you know it will be perfect."
Jamie isn't short of musical friends. Following his radical reworking of I'm New Here, he did remixes for Florence and the Machine, labelmate Adele, Rhianna, Alicia Keys and Drake.
But In Colour, all his own painstaking work, is packed with many remarkable flavours that elevate the listener and provoke thought. Does dance music need to be enjoyed in a lonely field or club, as some probably thought in the 90s? Do you need to be surrounded by thousands of ephemeral friends? Of course not. Only the music matters. That's how Jamie would have it too. He says: "The best music I make is when I lock myself away and I feel like I exist in a space that's close to nowhere. Where nothing else matters but sound."
Paul Dorrian is a UK-based freelance journalist.
