Ten years ago today, on May 29, 2015, Jamie xx released his debut solo album, In Colour.
The 11-song project reached No. 21 on the Billboard 200 and No. 3 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart, generating hits including “Gosh,” “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” and “Loud Places” and becoming a beloved LP of the era.
Billboard also celebrated the album upon its release, publishing a glowing review that identified the British producer’s ability to create a collage of ’90s U.K. rave culture that simultaneously acknowledged the rich history of this era while also sounding entirely fresh.
“Jamie xx is 26 years old, which means he was barely out of diapers during the heyday of ’90s U.K. rave culture, which provides the heart, soul and inspiration for his jaw-dropping solo debut, In Colour,” wrote Billboard contributor Garrett Kamps.
The review continues to say that “The xx member (real name: Jamie Smith) reportedly combed through videos from the era on YouTube, experiencing it in a way that generations before him could not: all at once, chopped up, voyeuristically and set to the best music. This, conveniently, describes the rush of hearing In Colour, an ambitious collage of dance music’s most artistically exciting decade, assembled with maximum TLC by a visionary who inherited its legacy.
“Pockmarked by bits of dialogue from the era’s radio shows and documentaries,” Kamps continues, “the record leaves no doubt as to its source material, and Jamie xx is among other U.K. electronic-dance acts, such as Disclosure and Four Tet, that are tapping the genre’s past to forge its future. But no one has nailed it quite like this.”
Read the complete 2015 review here.
Speaking with Billboard last year upon the release of In Colour‘s long-awaited follow-up, In Waves, the artist said his country’s esteemed history with electronic music, combined with some good old fashioned homesickness, inspired the album’s tone.
“When I was making Colour, I was on tour [with The xx], and had been for seven or eight years nonstop,” he said. “I was really homesick, and I was dreaming up ideas about the U.K. and music in the U.K. and the dance scene there and everything that has happened since the ’80s in dance music in the U.K., which is a lot. It was sort of my fantasy version of U.K. dance music history. Because I was missing home, it made me feel more like I was at home, I guess.”
He also reflected on the differences within himself as he made two connected projects nine years apart, saying that while listening to In Colour while making In Waves, “I remember being really surprised by a lot of decisions I had made as a younger person, and remembering who the hell I was when I made those decisions.
“I guess I was drunk quite a lot of the time, having a lot of fun in my mid-20s,” he continued with a laugh while reflecting on the production process for In Colour. “It’s very painstaking, all these decisions you feel are so important. Then listening to them 10 years later or five years later, you can’t believe you made any of the decisions. And you think they’re wrong, or I would have made completely different decisions now, but I guess that’s a part of it.”
