Jamiroquai
Emergency On Planet Earth

THE REVIEW

Wow, what a headline! Young Jason is really worried! It's 1993 when Sony Music releases the first work by Jamiroquai, a group of decent musicians with hot blood and the desire to shout against the world that isn't turning as it should. The key is funky music blended with instruments distant from the classic European pop conception: the didgeridoo, for example, is used in several tracks on the first albums, and it's an instrument created and historically used by Australian aborigines. It's a deep and grating sound, continuous and waving, dark and obscure. Yet well-placed. Worth listening to.

The initial lineup of the group: Toby Smith on keyboards, Nick Van Gelder on drums, and Stuart Zender on bass. Completing the sound Kofi Kari and Maurizio Ravalio on percussion, finally Simon Bartholomew and Glenn Nightingale on guitars. A big band, in short, accompanying the thin and delicate voice of this curious character who gets his crazy hats designed by his mother, whose gloomy past is made up of begging, nights under bridges, and drugs that sped up his tired synapses.

But the essence is the music. His music, or that of the group if you prefer, so fresh and finely contaminated, understood with difficulty, because it was too particular and distant from what young people in the early nineties were enjoying, drawn to a pop-rock increasingly "popular." And thus emerges a music, a new sound, for those bored and rebellious minorities. First concerts half-empty and people lying down to let themselves get twilighted by drugs in the warm chaos, with the background of the J-band. And those dances, so elastic and inimitable, evoking high and instability, homage to alcohol and perdition. The world falls apart and I protest by "merging with the world." In short, friends, we talk about origins, freshness, music for the few, and those few reject a little of everything and are a bit rejected by everyone...

Acid Jazz, distant sounds, recovery of black sounds, soul, guitar riffs full of elevenths and thirteenths, open notes... what the heck is going on? It's the sound of Jamiroquai, friends, and it's a really tasty sound. The first listen won't gratify you, but gradually you will be absorbed by the quality of this music. DO NOT buy this CD if you like the music of JK from Syncronized onwards. Already in Travelling without moving, there's an influence of electronic sounds and (useless) reggae influences that skew a bit off the original (and original) line of the group. Not to mention the decline in the lyrics...

There’s no filler music in this first album. Emergency on planet earth really has something to say, both musically and lyrically. When you gonna learn is of an unsuspected freshness and seraphic softness, given the tangle of characters playing it. Maybe it's early, maybe not, but this is a British trip pop sound, and the sound of the violin is as unexpected as ever. Too young to die is, if you like, a small great success, Jason's little voice declaring the fragility and anti-war intent of the piece. In Hooked up it's about drugs, a need to escape? In I like to do it, he speaks out against laws and the feeling of suffocation. And then pause on Emergency on planet earth, or Evolution 1993 (even?) or again Blow your mind, where the overwhelming and appealing sound will certainly involve you. The sense of youthful anger and rebellion is felt in every lyric, every note. The emotion of expressing one's ideas with courage has a symbolic dignity and becomes a symbol for someone. It's not rap, it's not black, it's not pop, it's not jazz, it's Jamiroquai's sound. Strong music full of ideas. New music.

What remains of the early Jamiroquai today? Nothing. A young rebel and angry man has turned into a wealthy and jaded dancer, who cares about sound quality and no longer about the freshness of the music (which represented for him, in fact, the path to salvation), that freshness that comes, yes ladies and gentlemen, from the humid garage where he rehearsed in 1990, driven by the desire to express himself, to communicate his discomfort, the desire for change, through an artistic expression. His music has regressed, too many forced contaminations, too much electronics, too much haste in churning out soulless tracks, for the series “umm, now what can I write about? My enormous villa or the £1000 wine I quaff while I scratch? Oh no, about my 21st Ferrari, or perhaps the roar of its engine," while once it was about revolution, destiny, mind, earth, anarchy, and education and the space cowboy had to be the warrior. And now? Just a nice memory.