STACK #239 September 2024

MUSIC FEATURE

visit jbhifi.com.au/stack

IN WAVES W hen Jamie “xx” Smith DJed at Falls Downtown electronic/dance music LP of 2024. Does it deliver? Happily yes. The super-DJ/producer has

Jamie xx

vocals, and shifting tempos. The mythic Melbourne duo are again on board for All You Children , which, unexpectedly, has ‘90s trance synths. Smith reveals other surprises. The bouncy UKG Waited All Night is an xx reunion with Romy and Oliver Sim duetting. Then the psychedelic closer Falling Together – Irish choreographer Oona Doherty laying down some cosmic spoken

Melbourne in late 2022, he appeared as a silhouette in the dark amphitheatre amid lasers and smoke machines

already previewed cuts in sets and circulated successive singles – the first, Baddy on the Floor , choppy piano house made alongside Chicago icon Honey Dijon. In Waves is meant to feel like a nocturnal

– more warehouse rave than festival.

The Brit – one third of the feted post-dubstep band The xx – brings that sense of abandon

clubbing adventure, capturing the post pandemic fervour for partying and inhibition. Smith forgoes the nostalgia sweeping through dance by simultaneously looking to the past and the future

to his exhilarating second album, In Waves . The piano-led prelude Wanna even has an airhorn. Smith won accolades with 2015’s solo debut In Colour – its hit I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times) now a party classic. Nearly a decade on, Jamie still has his finger on the pulse – In Waves is the most anticipated

In Waves by Jamie xx is out Sep 20 via Young/Remote Control

Smith previously co-produced The Avalanches’ Wherever You Go – and the Australians’ eccentric plunderphonics aesthetic permeates In Waves as much as Fred again..’s ubiquitous hyper UK garage, with shattered samples, pitched

word – evokes Orbital or The Chemical Brothers’ Balearica, with squelchy acid 303s. In Waves is sanguine music searching for more good times. Cyclone Wehner

– In Waves defying temporality. The standout Life , elevated by Swedish star Robyn, mashes up electropop, nu-disco, and 2000s R&B with horns.

SLIM PICKINGS Guess who’s back? Eminem tried to kill him, but Slim Shady still reigns supreme.

As we celebrate the release of the new Slim Shady opus, here are our five favourite alter egos: Percy Thrillington A 1977 album, Thrillington , was credited to a UK socialite named Percy “Thrills” Thrillington. Never heard of him? It was actually Paul McCartney, and the album was an instrumental version of his 1971 album Ram . Sir Paul didn’t reveal he was Percy until 1989. Roman Zolanski The Queen of Rap Nicki Minaj says her male alter ego is a wild, blonde, outspoken, gay English man. Sasha Fierce “She doesn’t do interviews,” Beyoncé says of her on stage persona. “She only performs.” Sasha surfaced on Beyoncé’s third solo album, 2008’s I Am… Sasha Fierce . The Traveling Wilburys The members of one of rock’s greatest supergroups all had assumed names. The five Wilbury brothers were: Nelson (George Harrison), Otis (Jeff Lynne), Charlie T. Jr (Tom Petty), Lefty (Roy Orbison), and Lucky (Bob Dylan). Ziggy Stardust There’s no doubt that David Bowie is the chameleon king. His most loved character, Ziggy Stardust, was an alien rock star who came to Earth to preach a message of hope.

B efore issuing his new album, Eminem posted a Slim Shady obituary in the Detroit Free Press : “Ultimately, the very things that seemed to be the tools he used became calling cards that defined an existence that could only come to a sudden and horrific end.” Eminem’s alter ego first appeared on the Slim Shady EP in 1997. “Everybody’s got two sides to them,” the rapper explained. “Slim Shady’s just an angry side for me to vent.” Sometimes a character takes on a life of its own. On his 2002

album The Eminem Show , Eminem (real name Marshall Mathers III) lamented how he “created a monster, ’cause nobody wants to see Marshall no more – they want Shady, I’m chopped liver”. Jeff Jenkins

The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)

by Eminem is out Sep 13 via Universal

Eminem

76 SEPTEMBER 2024

jbhifi.com.au