It was fitting that even at his biggest solo show to date, Jamie xx slipped onstage almost unnoticed. The man born Jamie Smith has never been one for the limelight: despite his exalted position in pop culture – one third of art-pop auteurs The xx; producer to Drake and Alicia Keys; remixer of Adele and Radiohead – Smith’s approach to music making has always been one of the reluctant mastermind. You’ll find him on the edge of the dancefloor, not the thick of the action.
And so with the support act DJ Shy One still at the decks, Smith arrived to no grand fanfare in the pitch black, visible only by a solitary spotlight shining. But what followed was also what we have come to expect from dance music’s introverted alchemist. With a short record scratch, Smith eased into the distant “Wanna” by way of gentle introduction; the opening track on new album In Waves , his first in nine years, takes two classic UK garage samples (Tina Moore’s “Never Gonna Let You Go” and Double 99’s “RipGroove”) to give the distant echo of raves past as a new one struck up.
From there started a two-hour journey through dance culture past and present. It was quite the thrill. As one critic recently noted, Smith’s music doesn’t so much rely on genre as feeling: a sort of euphoria tinged with uncertainty.
But his live shows are something altogether more visceral. In Waves – a reference to Smith’s surprising love of surfing – is more evolution than revolution. Whereas 2015 .