Music In Your Eyes

Jamie XX featuring Romy “Loud Places”

A lot of the appeal of Jamie XX’s music is that it’s an extremely introverted version of music designed for extroverted situations – dancing in clubs, going to parties, being at festivals. It’s dance music, but at a remove from the physical experience, focused almost entirely on the sensation of sound and the expression of feelings. “Loud Places,” a song with his XX bandmate Romy Madley-Croft, brings all of the subtext in Jamie’s music to the foreground. It’s about being an introvert looking for intimacy, and dealing with these “loud places” as a necessary part of finding someone to be alone with. Jamie’s music evokes the feeling of being alone in a crowd, and when the sample drops in the chorus, the feeling of a snippet of music overlapping perfectly with your emotional state for just a moment. That bit in the chorus where Romy and the sample sync up is truly beautiful – it’s the sound of unexpected connection, even if it may not be the sort of connection she went looking for.

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