Jamie Lidell - Compass download free

With COMPASS, Jamie Lidell returns to the electronic/soul merge that first brought him to great attention on MULTIPLY. But he also harkens back to his more chaotic earlier IDM work -- "Completely Exposed" seems to straddle these two worlds, while "Your Sweet Boom" draws both on roots and blips. "She Needs Me" gets back to more traditional funk, as does the organ-fueled "I Can Love Again." But Lidell tries other directions too, like the disco-electro-groove of "I Wanna Be Your Telephone," which sounds like a track Peaches would guest vocalist on, though it's Lidell's frequent collaborator Nikka Costa. He also tries his hand at a more aggressive rock sound on "You Are Waking" and acoustic songwriting on the title track, though by its end, it has wandered off into its own world. The darkness and the resonance of "Coma Chameleon" gives that track a particular bite, while the slow chug of "Big Drift" has a chain-gang lugubriousness to it. "You See My Light" ends the album on a lo-fi note, and while Lidell does seem to be trying out new directions, he might need a more steady compass to guide him.