Wednesday, 5 April 2017

Automaton

Some artists have a regular as clockwork schedule when it comes to their releases and others just don't.


It's been around six whole years since the British acid/jazz group Jamiroquai last released an album at least in part with leader singer Jay Kay, becoming a Dad so understandably wanting to be involved in those early years. On March 31, they delivered the much anticipated Automaton.

In the twenty-three years since "When You Gonna Learn" the strongly environmentally conscious   first single for Sony, much has changed and this album reflects a part of that bringing in digital drumming but it retains that commitment to real playing using instruments, analogue synthesizers rather than computers, singling even with odd rap in an old school soul style as if we're in the 1970's.

Telling it too was record mainly live to analogue tape so we have an update on that sound and if 1999's Synkronized was almost jazz funk by numbers, this is a return to the less formal looseness of the first two albums.

I bought this on lossless full cd quality download.

Recommended.

My original copies of Emergency on Planet  Earth, The Return Of The Space Cowboy, Travelling Without Moving and Synkronized were on 1990's MiniDiscs and while I did get the 2013 deluxe editions of the first three, I did find the sound a bit bloated in the bass and not properly expanding in an attempt to make it sound louder like so many current albums are so I tracked down original used cd copies to transfer for the Fiio music player.

They sounded much better.

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