Jamie Lidell, Dojo Cuts @ theFactory Theatre, Sydney(11/03/11)

Mon 14th Mar, 2011 in Gig Reviews

One day Jamie Lidell, an English born avant-garde electronic artist, put down his laptop and picked up a microphone. The shift was so radical it seemed unlikely to be anything more than another lab experiment for someone already adept at sonic alchemy and synthesizing established sounds.

Somehow an unassuming bespectacled geek-step aficionado found a 24ct nugget of Motown gold buried beneath his complex time signatures and slivers of abstract noises and ran with it. He’s toured Australia before and the Factory played host to his latest, together with hard working Sydney funk favourites Dojo Cuts.

Dojo Cuts have been attracting attention from some pretty heavy hitters on the Funk scene of late, from local heroes The Bamboos to Sharon Jones. Their inclusion on the bill was a safe bet and a logical choice for Lidell’s return. The performance on Friday was good, and although their emphasis on structure and the formalities of funk may have left them a little cold at times, they still had hips swaying. You really can’t argue with Roxy Ray’s vocals, and the diminutive siren was a joy to listen to. She has great texture and range and really punches out over the horns and percussion.

They played a range of tunes from their new LP the 1,2,3’s, which included a pretty nifty version of Stevie Wonder’s Uptight. One of the keys to good funk is the space between notes, and control over those gaps is what gives it that sweet heavy beat, the backbone of funk. Dojo Cuts are a tight outfit (a little too much perhaps) and do this really well.

After a short warm up from the Mad Racket DJ’s, playing through several smart tracks like the Isley Brothers’ Work To Do and the jello-boogie of Olav Brekke Mathisen, Lidell, with his floppy hair, junk chic jacket and winning smile, flipped the switch on the stomping chain-gang funk of The Ring from last year’s Compass LP.

To make a stylistic jump of such significance takes balls, no doubt, but as it turns out Lidell not only has the vocal chops for soul, but also has a nice array of characters and moods to craft his tunes with. His is a rich pallet, sonically and otherwise. His setup allowed him to gleefully summon his old Super_Collider persona at will, tweaking and morphing more routine passages into spastic, hall-of-mirrors exercises. His solo rendition of A Little Bit More was amazing, stretching out for ages, layering fuzzy vocal loops over each other into densely compacted rhythms anchored by beat box percussion. Eventually the melody developed and gave it some focus and by the time it reached its sweaty breathless conclusion the night could’ve easily turned into a different party.

Woozy Beck collaboration Coma Chameleon was indicative of Compass’ slightly more aggressive approach, but it provided a counterpoint to the warmer numbers like the gospel soul of Another Day or the roadhouse blues of What Is It This Time?. Closing number was his breakout hit Multiply and served as a nice exclamation point to a great evening.

Jamie Lidell’s explosive approach to soul remains one of indie music’s most surprising success stories over the past five years, and although his label bosses at Warp initially approached his new material with trepidation it’s nice to see they backed him, allowing a hugely talented artist to add something new to a landscape crowded with complicated noise and opaque artistic intent. Soul is an honest sound, and the fact that he delivers on its mission statement in spades despite his healthy injection of electronic manipulation speaks volumes on his enormous talent and natural intuition as a musician. He put on a phenomenal show, and what’s the purpose of soul if not to move the masses?