Bleep

Jamie! Good to see you again. Jamie has been functioning on the low of late. While he’s collaborated with the likes of Florence & The Machine and Headie One & Fred again… in the past couple of years, but it’s been a fair while since we had new solo material from The xx’s golden boy - you’ll no doubt remember that his last solo LP In Colour came out way back in 2015. As such, any new Jamie xx music is a treat at this point, but when he comes back with a track as good as ‘Idontknow’ you simply have to take your hat off to the man.

The first thing that you notice about ‘Idontknow’, released here on a one-sided 12” by Young Turks, is the tempo. Running at around 160 bpm, this is easily one of the quickest things ever released under the Jamie xx name. 160 bpm, of course, is jungle/footwork territory, and the influence of the former can be heard in the breakbeats that enter late on in the track while there is a ghost of the latter to the zany vocal manipulations that run throughout ‘Idontknow’.

However, Jamie is doing something all of his own here. The warm rushes of harmony that guide ‘Idontknow’ draw both from his own more measured output and the ebullient house sound of Swim-era Caribou, and there’s a little Overmono to track’s conflagration of rave rhythms and setting-sun chord progressions. When everything hits at the same time, it makes for a beautiful rush.

It’s ya boy! Jamie xx makes a long-overdue return to the fray with ‘Idontknow’, a track which is both one of the most high-octane and most emotionally vivid of his distinguished career.