A Funk Odyssey
(Sony)
Jamiroquai, fronted by Jay Kay, the white kid making black music from London who gained fame in a buffalo hat (looking like an escapee gone mad from some kind of 'Loyal Order of the Moose' lodge), should more than ever be heralded as musical prophets rather than lost souls.
When Emergency On Planet Earth - slammed in part for its strong environmental message - landed on the post acid-house climate of 1992 Britain, its disco-funk was regarded as an anachronism, so America, circa 1970s.
But today, as club music matures and increasingly harks back to classic pre-techno dance music, whatever boundaries there were between Jamiroquai and Basement Jaxx have crumbled - and Jay Kay was there before all of them.
This fifth studio effort, while maintaining the classic Jamiroquai sound, is dripping with electro. Openers Little L and Feels So Good are along the lines of Parliament or Funkadelic. As always, Jay Kay sneaks in some ballads, replete with string arrangements, like Picture Of My Life, that vividly recalls Stevie Wonder. And, keeping in line with his multi-cultural approach that has seen the album go to No 1 in the UK, Australia, Italy and Japan, another slow medley, Corner Of The Earth, incorporating Arabic rhythms. But it's the hard electronic throbbing of numbers like Twenty Zero One (Jay Kay's way of pronouncing '2001?') that set this album apart.