Get the latest gossip
Jamie xx: In Waves review – bright, blissful bangers for 3am on big speakers
Filled with guest stars from his xx bandmates to Robyn, this long-gestating second solo album picks up where In Colour left off, and deepens its dancefloor devotion
The artwork for In Waves.Nine years later, its follow-up arrives in an identical sleeve design but with the colours replaced by a striking monochrome op-art pattern: it looks not unlike the cover of The Faust Tapes, and seems to suggest starker, more experimental contents. Dafodil is clearly rooted in club culture, but it ropes guest stars Kelsey Lu, Panda Bear and John Glacier into a woozy evocation of the fleeting moment when whatever you’ve taken to enhance the dancefloor experience becomes an end in itself, and the music is just a distant soundtrack to what’s currently happening in your brain. It neatly flips the script of an old disco trope: instead of celebrating the transience of a clubland hook-up – as on Phreek’s Weekend or Inner Life’s I’m Caught Up (in a One Night Love Affair) – it’s filled with hopeful anticipation that proximity on a dancefloor might lead to a deeper and more lasting relationship.
Or read this on The Guardian
