Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Active beginning in the early '90s, Jamiroquai has amassed a steady stream of hits in its native U.K. and experienced chart success in just about every other area of the world, with an irresistible blend of house rhythms and '70s-era soul/funk (the latter, especially, leading early on to claims of Stevie Wonder imitations). The band has gone though several lineup changes during their career, but through it all their leader has remained singer/songwriter Jason Kay (aka J.K.). Born on December 30, 1969, in Stretford, Manchester, Kay's mother, Karen, was a jazz singer who regularly performed at nightclubs, and in the '70s had her own TV show. After leaving home at the age of 15, Kay found himself homeless and in trouble with the law (by committing petty crimes to get by). After a near-death experience (where he was attacked and stabbed) and being arrested for a crime he did not commit, Kay decided to return home, where he chose to pursue a legitimate career over crime: music. Kay didn't have a band to back up his compositions, but he quickly came up with his future project's name, Jamiroquai, a name that combined the name of a Native American tribe (the Iroquois) along with the music-based word, jam.

Kay's home demos caught the attention of the record label Acid Jazz, which issued Jamiroquai's debut single "When You Gonna Learn?" in late 1992. With Kay enlisting the help of others (Jamiroquai's best-known lineup included drummer Derrick McKenzie, keyboard player Toby Smith, bassist Stuart Zender, and vibraphonist Wallis Buchanan), the single was a success and was soon followed by a long-term and lucrative recording contract with Sony. Jamiroquai's full-length debut, Emergency on Planet Earth, followed in 1993 and became a major hit in their native England (peaking at number one on the charts), spawning such Top Ten hit singles as "Too Young to Die" and "Blow Your Mind." The band's second release, The Return of the Space Cowboy in 1995, managed to steer Jamiroquai clear of the sophomore jinx that affects so many up-and-coming bands by out-selling its predecessor in Europe and was a sizeable hit in Japan, as well.

With most of the world dancing to Jamiroquai's beat, America was next in line for the band's third effort, 1996's Traveling Without Moving. The album spawned the worldwide hit "Virtual Insanity," for which an award-winning video was filmed and helped the album achieve platinum status in the States by the year's end (as well as a highlighted performance at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards). Despite achieving breakthrough success, bassist Zender opted to leave the group during sessions for its follow-up, which resulted in Kay scraping almost an entire album's worth of new tracks in order to start from scratch with a new bassist (the slot would eventually go to newcomer Nick Fyffe). During the downtime, Jamiroquai contributed a brand-new track, "Deeper Underground," to the soundtrack for the 1998 movie Godzilla.

But the long wait between albums seemed to kill Jamiroquai's momentum in the U.S., where a fourth release overall, 1999's Synkronized, was largely ignored (yet back home and across the globe, it was another major commercial success). Subsequently, it appeared as though the majority of Jamiroquai's U.S. media attention focused on non-music related events, such as the band turning down a million-dollar offer to play at a concert on New Year's Eve 1999, and when Kay was accused of assaulting a tabloid photographer (with the charges later being dropped). It didn't take Jamiroquai as long the next time around to issue another album, with A Funk Odyssey hitting the racks two years later in 2001. Kay also helmed a volume in the mix-album series Late Night Tales. From there, Jamiroquai spent the next two years gathering material for a sixth studio album. Dynamite, which was finally released in 2005, was written and recorded in Spain, Italy, Costa Rica, Scotland, New York, Los Angeles and Jamiroquai's own Buckinghamshire studio. The group's seventh studio album, 2010's Rock Dust Light Star, dutifully blended the disco and electronic leanings of 2005’s Dynamite with the organic, roots-based soul of the band's 1993 debut.

Biography by Greg Prato, Allmusic.com

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Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Jamiroquai made a large initial splash in 1993 with Emergency on Planet Earth, a psychedelic melange of tight funky rhythms, acid rock intimations, and '70s soul melodies. Frontman Jay Kay introduces himself with an environmentally oriented manifesto inside the sleeve, and his lyrics smack of idealist save the planet revolution. But this revolution would be held on the dancefloor if the band's impressive rhythm section had anything to say about it. Horns, string arrangements, and a didgeridoo provide full texture on most of the album's tunes, and the socially aware party vibe raged into the U.K.'s number one album slot. For a debut, Emergency shows quite a range of diversity, from the up-tempo jazzy instrumental "Music of the Mind" to the stop-start funk of "Whatever It Is, I Just Can't Stop."

Review by Troy Carpenter, Allmusic.com

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Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Jamiroquai's sophomore record had all the slinky grooves and great musicianship of the debut, but it also offered a better set of songs and more ambitious musical themes. As with Emergency on Planet Earth, Jason Kay's dead-on impression of Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone drives the group's blend of acid jazz and funky R&B. "Space Cowboy" and "Light Years" were hits all over the world, and made the band stars in Europe and Japan, while substantial clubplay earned them a degree of recognition for American audiences. But Jamiroquai refused to be known as simply a party band; the group takes on social issues such as homelessness and Native Americans' rights.

Review by John Bush, Allmusic.com

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Travelling Without Moving deepens the acid jazz and '70s soul fusions of Return of the Space Cowboy, yet it doesn't have the uniform consistency of its predecessor. Nevertheless, Jamiroquai's fusions sound more fully realized with each outing, which makes its patchy songwriting forgivable.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

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Three years after their breakout Travelling Without Moving, Jamiroquai returned with another album that charts Jay Kay's continuing fascination with club-bound music of the 1970s – from disco to jazz-funk to rare groove to later Motown – but also shows signs of maturity. Produced by Kay with Al Stone, who also collaborated on Travelling Without Moving, the album includes several tracks (like the single "Canned Heat") that work infectious acid jazz grooves, and Kay's hipster vocals give out feel-good vibes through a set of ambiguously good-time lyrics. Though other tracks show a bit of an electronica update to the affairs, each still spotlights how strong and tight the band is. It may not be a leap ahead in sound, but Synkronized is another solid Jamiroquai record.

Review by John Bush, Allmusic.com

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After the jarring reception of 1999's Synkronized, Jamiroquai constructed A Funk Odyssey, something more polished and slick inside the band's own brand of funky disco-rock. Jason Kay and keyboardist/songwriter Toby Smith perfected a maturation that was left keyed in Travelling Without Moving but left open-ended on Synkronized for a wide scope of musical delight. A Funk Odyssey taps into various illustrious grooves of the Latin world, classic rock, and mainstream club culture, and Jamiroquai is tight and eager to make everyone shake their groove thing in their own light. The first single, "Little L," beams with Kajagoogoo-like synths while warping into a funk-driven hue of orchestral whirlpools, but Jamiroquai allows the band's extroverted and unattached personality to shine on the worldbeat-tinged "Corner of the Earth." Kay strips aside all disco humor and grandeur for something personally inviting, something that's heartfelt, too. A Funk Odyssey sparks classic enthusiasm, and it feels good. Dance music is not just a design, it's something far more tangible, and Jamiroquai surely captures a fierce desire to make it more emotional on the band's own level.

Review by MacKenzie Wilson, Allmusic.com

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Not unlike one of its lead singer Jay Kay's much publicized Lamborghinis, the U.K. funk band Jamiroquai is primarily a vehicle for its frontman's various fetishes. Which is another way of saying that Kay loves disco and fancy retro sneakers and he wears both well. He has done so ever since he hippie-danced his way out of the acid jazz ghetto of the early '90s with Jamiroquai's revelatory debut album, Emergency on Planet Earth. That album featured Kay's bright and soulful vocals against '70s-style funk and drew obvious comparisons to Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire, and sundry other icons of vintage R&B. Not too much has changed in the years since and 2005's Dynamite finds Kay and Co. delving once again into various '70s- and '80s-inspired dance sounds. Similar to 2001's dazzlingly slick Funk Odyssey, Dynamite reveals Kay as a dancefloor eclectic, inclined to grab as much from Chic and Parliament as Kajagoogoo, the Police, and Terry Callier. Keeping to this grab bag aesthetic, Kay makes the most of his experimentation with some "vocal bass synthetics" on the hard funk title track. Also engaging is the melancholy soul-folk of "Seven Days in Sunny June" and the similarly quiet storm-ready ballad "Talullah." On the funky side of things, "Starchild" finds Kay proclaiming the coming of a disco superman while "Time Won't Wait" is an infectious Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson boogie fest with Kay urging people to make their dreams come true over a bed of pulsating disco beats. The Jamiroquai faithful would accept nothing less.

Review by Matt Collar, Allmusic.com

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Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Collecting most of Jamiroquai's singles since lead singer Jay Kay first donned a large furry buffalo hat for the band's 1992 debut, Emergency on Planet Earth, High Times: Singles 1992-2006 is a superb listen and a great summation of what has made the retro-futurist funk band so successful. Sure, High Times doesn't include every single they released – the fantastic "Light Years" and "You Give Me Something" aren't included – and admittedly it was largely put together to fulfill and finish off Jamiroquai's contract with Sony. Nonetheless, as an encapsulation of what makes Jamiroquai such a phenomenal pop-funk-dance entity, it's an infectiously listenable affair. Running chronologically through the most recognizable singles Kay and company have released, High Times is easily the best collection of Jamiroquai tunes on one disc and hits all of the most memorable tracks off each of the group's albums. Included are such well-known tracks as "Virtual Insanity" (the band's breakthrough single) and "Cosmic Girl," as well as such similarly catchy and funky cuts as the didgeridoo-driven "When You Gonna Learn," the blissed-out "Space Cowboy," and the latter-day would-be disco classic "Little L." Also included are two new recordings, "Runaway" and "Radio," that solidly stand on their own pop merits.

Review by Matt Collar, Allmusic.com

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Jamiroquai - Albums Collection 1993-2010 (8CD)

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Coming a half-decade after 2005's Dynamite, 2010's Rock Dust Light Star finds Jamiroquai and its frontman, Jay Kay, trying to re-ignite the funk machine by heading back to its rock and organic soul roots. In that sense, Rock Dust retains much of the black-light disco power that made such previous singles as "Little L" from 2001's A Funk Odyssey and "Feels Just Like it Should" from Dynamite such dancefloor burners. However, the album is a bit of a grower, with Kay evincing more of an interest in knotty, long-form funk numbers that take their sweet time to reach their inevitable, euphorically funky pop pinnacle. Nonetheless, Kay, having entered his forties, doesn't seem to be letting up on the disco gas – nor the literal kind as the helicopter and Porsche-sploitation video for the funky slick single "White Knuckle Ride" proves. Still, Kay has revealed more of a passion for laid-back, acoustic guitar-driven tracks, and the mid-album ballad "Blue Skies" is perhaps the best one he's ever written. The more booty-minded faithful get a bevy of tracks including the aforementioned "White Knuckle Ride," as well as the Jazz Crusaders-sounding "Smoke and Mirrors" featuring a muscular saxophone solo outro. Elsewhere, Kay delves into the bluesy slow-burn acid rock of "Hurtin'," which takes its time to build to a wicked, soulful climax, and then the oft-headdressed singer goes all '80s robot-disco-funk on the Jaco Pastorius bass-inspired "She's a Fast Persuader." Ultimately, with the album's mix of horns, various percussion instruments, piano, and a general live-in-studio vibe combined with a mature "deep cut" songwriting approach, Rock Dust Light Star does bring to mind the more full-band sound of Jamiroquai's early acid jazz albums and goes a long way toward reestablishing Kay as a uniquely talented and legitimate heir to the '70s funk throne.

Review by Matt Collar, Allmusic.com