Jamie xx

Towards the end of his last tour of North and South America with The xx, the pop trio’s sonic and rhythmic heartbeat Jamie was pinged a YouTube clip from a friend in London. He was suffering a bout of homesickness. Intermittently, it can get to him. So when he eventually got round to clicking on Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, it was as if a hand was wrapping around his shoulder, reminding him of everything he holds dear and romantic about the margins of the national dancefloor that interest him most, back home.

Jamie’s music is blessed with the same streamlined polarity of looking back to enable moving forward. This is his major gift to the British dance music conversation. In January this year, Jamie xx stepped aside from the mixing desk of his solitary studio bunker space in Old Street and decided that In Colour was finished. It had been three years since he had began work on the first cut that suggested he had a solo record in him, Girl. Both the title and carefully calibrated, vibrant accompanying graphic design imagery for the album are a deliberate delineation away from the chic monochromes that have marked his work with The xx.