Jamie Woon - Making Time, album review: 'a sophisticated make-out record'

Apt title. In the four years since the fragile bleeps of his Burial-produced debut, Mirrorwriting, south London soul boy Jamie Woon retreated from view. Now you see why.

A painstaking approach is evident in every note of his second album, written variously in Los Angeles, Essex and China, and recorded with live musicians under the increasingly in-demand producer Lexx. Woon has turned away from chilly computer noodling, seeking inspiration instead in the warm mid-Nineties neo-soul of Erykah Badu and D’Angelo — and there’s a rhythmic vitality here that soon becomes addictive.

Sharpness is an oozily sensual play of light and dark, a stuttering bassline accentuating the deft minimal touches in the drums, the chorus opening a morass of deep yearning. Movement is the closest thing to a proper dance tune, though Woon’s breathy-creamy vocals soon usher in an acoustic guitar-led celebration of sunshine.

Lament (apparently inspired by the bassline on Fauré’s Requiem) and the closer Dedication envelop you more slowly in their shifting textures. It can be a little too restrained — oh, what the guitar solo on Little Wonder might have been if he hadn’t held back! — but it does make for a sophisticated make-out record.

(PMR)