Jacob Collier - Djesse Vol. 3 (2020) [Hi-Res]

First a warning: if your musical life is saturated in Coleman’s harmolodics or Coltrane’s sheets of sound, best stop reading now. Jacob Collier may have been championed by Quincy Jones (“I’ve never seen anyone like Jacob”), shared a stage with Herbie Hancock and triumphed at the Jazz FM awards but, frankly, it is hard to squeeze any of the 25-year-old’s output into the pigeonhole called jazz music.

Jacob Collier Djesse album coverOn Djesse Vol. 3 there is R&B, pop, dubstep, soul and funk (with the ghosts of Prince and Parliament often lurking), but Blue Note – or indeed blue notes – not here. Anyway, let’s not play the oldies’ game of getting hung up on genres; anyone who can snag their own BBC Prom aged 23 must be worth investigating.

This is the third of four planned volumes of a 50-song project featuring no less than two dozen artists and it’s a return to electronics after the woodier Vol. 2. The album once again shows off Collier’s remarkable production skills, and also his restless energy… some would say too restless. Collier’s busy R&B flavoured cut-ups can seem like music for the TikTok generation – as if the young Londoner is afraid that if he sticks to a rhythm for more than a minute listeners will flip channel. Take the opening tune: Count the People is a potentially great dance track that seems destined to build to a red-blooded climax – instead the tune keeps getting ambushed by hyperactive raps, then slashing guitar, even a manic banjo.

The impact of strong songs – Time Alone With You, All I Need, Butterflies – is hobbled by fussy production. There’s barely a backing vocal that Collier can’t resist speeding up Minnie Mouse-style or processing into a robo-choir. Happily, a series of female guest singers – Mahalia, Jessie Reyez – inject some needed soul and humanity.

You can’t doubt the talents of Collier, who was given his first recording software by his musician parents when he was aged seven. If he calms down a bit there may be great albums to come – or perhaps he should be lending his production skills to artists with more interesting tales to tell than his rather straightforward love stories – the Phil Spector of the Logic Pro age maybe (but without the firearms).