Thursday, May 13th 2010
News: Jamie Lidell
Sharing A Cab With Jamie Lidell
The Black Cab Sessions are one of my favorite things on the internet. Such a simple concept: Put a band in a cab. Drive around. Play music. Not every band has the chops to turn in a good performance under those circumstances, with all of the smoke and mirrors stripped away. But most that get into the Black Cab turn in great ones.
Case in point: Jamie Lidell probably most appropriately fits into an electronic / trip-hop pigeonhole, though his soulful vocals crossover to fans of R&B and motown. Something in between Moby and The Black Keys, Lidell wowed us at Coachella ’06 by playing a full set armed only with a loop recorder, building songs on the spot entirely from sounds out of his own mouth (and the mouths in the audience). Just as he does in this Black Cab session, alone in the back of a cab driving around Shoreditch.
It made us think of some of Michael Jackson’s early demos. There’s this great version of Beat It, where he lays down the beat, the guitar, the harmonies, the backups, every single layer of the song just by overdubbing his humming into a 4-track recorder. We’ll always be in awe of artists who can so completely envision and effortlessly express a song.
