Synkronized

A mid-session personnel crisis should have left scars all over Jamiroquai’s fourth album. Instead, Synkronized sounds remarkably assured. Jamiroquai entered the sessions for their fourth album with bassist Stuart Zender still central to the band’s identity; when he left during recording, Nick Fyffe was brought in and the material was re-recorded. Rather than exposing the disruption, the finished record arrives sleek, tightly arranged and rhythmically confident.

Recorded during 1998 and 1999 at Chillington in Buckinghamshire, Synkronized was produced by Jason Kay and Al Stone and released in June 1999. It sits comfortably across funk, soul, R&B, disco and the acid-jazz lineage that had made Jamiroquai distinctive earlier in the decade, but the surfaces are increasingly polished. Kay’s falsetto glides over dense bass movement, clipped guitar and keyboards that can switch from retro warmth to late-1990s futurism without breaking the groove. The UK edition includes “Deeper Underground”, originally released the previous year and Jamiroquai’s only UK number-one single. Elsewhere, the album’s appeal is less about one dominant hit than the way the arrangements lock together. Rhythm is treated as architecture: bass, drums, percussion and keyboards each occupy a precise part of the frame, leaving Kay enough space to make the songs feel loose even when the production is meticulous. It was also the final Jamiroquai album to feature didgeridoo player Wallis Buchanan, closing another chapter in the band’s earlier sound.

Synkronized reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and number 28 in the United States, impressive evidence that the band had become a major international act. Yet the more interesting achievement is how little of its difficult birth is audible. This is music of polish and flow, made at a moment of significant personnel change. The grooves feel settled even when the band behind them was not, and that tension gives the album more character than its smooth exterior initially reveals.