Jamie Lidell has announced his first album album in nine years. Places of Unknowing will be out this summer via TODO, the new label from onetime 4AD head Simon Halliday. It’s also his first album since moving to Nashville and starting a family, and is a marked departure from the experimental soul, funk and club records he released on Warp, delving into classical-inspired orchestral pop that came out of learning piano during the pandemic.
“The piano I had in the house sat relatively unplayed for years,” Jamie says. “I would noodle around from time to time but I was never leaving the village as it were musically. When I started learning from Pascal Le Boeuf, he gave me tools to write changes down and that was such a liberating thing. I think I was of the opinion that learning too much would kill the joy of naivety. I suppose that’s completely obvious. Perhaps I overvalued my naivety and was scared that if I started to know too much I’d get stuck in trite ways. In the end the additional knowledge really only opened doors and I ended up unearthing all these songs.”
The first single from the album is “The Center” which was co-written with Jamie’s wife, Lindsay Rome. “I had some satisfyingly balanced piano moves that felt inspiring and when I got the words from my wife I was in the mood and a very rare thing occurred. It sounds like a flex but it’s just a thing that happens sometimes, I ran the track and sang it down only once. The melody and everything just flowed in one big outburst. I felt like I didn’t want to touch it after that. I left a verse out that was supposed to be part of it but I got superstitious and didn’t want to add to the lucky take. I took the task of handling Lindsey’s words very seriously. I didn’t want to let them down. To let her down. Sometimes that pressure helps to snap into a headspace. A serious headspace of knowing when things are important and trying to not break the delicates.”
“The Center” will be out officially on Wednesday, May 14 but you can watch a live performance of it performed at Nashville’s Turner Hall below.
Places of Unknowing
Inner world
Return of the repressed
How do I land
Choraleme
Unmasking
Last day of mourning
The center
The night I went crazy
Capture the moon
Never agreed to play
Ordinary ddryness