What the record is and where it came from
In Colour is Jamie xx’s debut solo album, composed over five years while still in the xx, beginning with his production work on their 2009 debut. It is an electronica and dance record intended to sound eraless. It was released on 29 May 2015 by Young Turks.
How it sounds, and how it was made
It sounds like UK garage, house, and rave fused with vocal fragments from Top Boy and unaired BBC Radio 1 segments. Jamie xx built it over five years using samples from Idris Muhammad, Hugh Masekela, Freeez, and The Persuasions’ 1971 ‘Good Times’ — bought in Detroit. He spliced Young Thug and Popcaan’s separately recorded vocals for ‘I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)’. Kieran Hebden co-produced ‘Seesaw’. Tom Elmhirst mixed tracks 2–11; David Wrench mixed track 1. Mandy Parnell mastered it.
What lands
The vocal splicing on ‘I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)’ lands — Young Thug’s ad-libs and Popcaan’s patois lock into the Persuasions’ loop with rhythmic inevitability. ‘Gosh’ lands — its clipped jungle break and Radio 1 sample create instant spatial disorientation. ‘Loud Places’ lands — Romy’s voice floats above a bassline that breathes like a room full of bodies. ‘Girl’ lands — the Top Boy sample opens a door into a specific London interior before the beat drops.
What does not
It does not rely on live instrumentation beyond Romy’s guitar and vocals, Oliver Sim’s vocals, or Novelist’s background sample. It does not use orchestral arrangements, analog synths as lead voices, or unprocessed field recordings. It does not build momentum through rising key changes, tempo shifts, or verse-chorus escalation. It does not foreground drum-machine programming as virtuosic display.
The ideas inside it
Eralessness as an act of curation, not erasure. Colour as sonic saturation — warmth, contrast, decay, luminosity — not metaphor. Sampling as dialogue across time and class: Top Boy’s London council estate, Detroit’s record bins, BBC radio’s archive, The Persuasions’ doo-wop harmony. The album treats memory as material, not mood.
Who should hear it, and who should not
People who listen to how space is used in a mix. People who notice where silence falls. People who care about how a vocal sample’s grain interacts with reverb decay. People who want club music that feels handmade, not templated. People who distrust the word ‘vibes’ as a substitute for description. People who skip past intros should not hear it.
Is it worth your time
Yes. It rewards attention to texture, space, and edit: the decay on a vocal fragment, the room left around a bassline, the way silence pulses between garage kicks. It is not background music. It asks for listening — not as nostalgia, but as active translation of source into sensation.