Jamiroquai

I first came across Jamiroquai in the sense I associated some piece of current musical taste with an actual identity at a party. A friend in Melbourne who was also at the time a first year registrar at the RVEEH with me, had a party at which (in 1999 when CDs were the musical source for most people); had a CD cover with a small alien figure with a tilted head wearing or possessing curved horns - demonic or cow like? It suggested concepts like losing faith, so maybe it was of the former type. Had it not been the diminutive size of the homunculus like figure I might not have given it another thought. The figure is possibly a self-projection of the man who in real life portrays Jamiroquai.  It is definitely complex in it's symbology.

Since then, my musical collection has always had a copy of Synkronized since a digital copy became available. My collection still has this original and I don't care to upgrade it to any fresher sampling since the copy I have is the one I am accustomed to listening to with all it's imperfections. If I did go to a 'better' sampling, I am almost certain that I would miss the original if by some chance I deleted it.

In the future there may even be attempts to recreate some of the older styles of musical compression for true vintage playback for those music lovers of the 2040's. They will search old archives for source codes to the music software encoders of this age perhaps.

I think this sense of importance for the archiving of the past and my entire digital life is what drives me to keep the originals.

Or maybe it's because today when listening to Automaton for the nth time where "Shake It On" starts with what through my best headphones sound like vinyl surface static noise - the little noise everyone of my era knows well at the points before the music started and after it ended when playing vinyl. It is obvious that the effect is added into track as a piece of musical artwork and it is these little things that still attract me to the eclectic music of Jamiroquai.

I obtained my copies of his latest work many years after 1999 when I first identified this artist in some very high quality formats including lossless from my own local musical library resource. The virtuousity of layering all of this synthesised music together is always evident. Because I often only get one of his albums many years after it's initial release I will hear it on the album and say, yes I remember that little bass line or hook. To someone who doesn't follow current music all that closely, that is quite something.

I noticed this particularly with his Funk Oddysey which I only ever listened to as a complete album in 2018. The Little L riff and many many others had at their times definitely made it into my ear and been snapshotted somewhere... It is a special album for that reason for me and one or two of those pieces could very well be my favourite Jamiroquai songs.

The thing I love about his music is that it doesn't really have an era of itself since it brings in the feel of all the happy times in history into it. "Something About You" has a little 60's muzak (you know the sort from the very fancy buildings around town that had elevators). Sometimes it's an 80's feel or the heavy bass guitar sample gives some 70s rock element. It's very clever. The synthesised woof of a dog here, a moody 60s high synthesiser soundbite there. "Summer Life" is how I'd describe it - where all the things in your mind that come from films of the 1960's where the leading man is just about to get to the culmination of the goal.  The song ends sounding to me like an advertising jingle, ie. full of positivity as it fades out.  

I may not have been a concurrent fan of his but Jamiroquai's music definitely still moves me.