Emergency On Planet Earth - Jamiroquai

Jamiroquai’s debut release came out in 1993 with the album “Emergency On Planet Earth”. The album has the UK band, headed by Jay Kay on lead vocals come out with what is a very original thing as they perform a mix of Acid-Jazz and Funk in a time when it had seemingly phased out from the mainstream.

1. “When You Gonna Learn”

To kick the album off you find them blazing through in a track which launches them right into the ...
...a track which brings in the classic eighties Funk grooves and the earlier Jazz (in the form of horns), and this is all topped off with something which shows even further originality with the use of the didgeridoo at sections through it.

**Five Stars**


2. “Too Young To Die”

Of all the songs on the album, I expect this one to be the one you are most likely to be familiar with. I have to say that I didn’t ... more

Jamiroquai’s debut release came out in 1993 with the album “Emergency On Planet Earth”. The album has the UK band, headed by Jay Kay on lead vocals come out with what is a very original thing as they perform a mix of Acid-Jazz and Funk in a time when it had seemingly phased out from the mainstream.

1. “When You Gonna Learn”

To kick the album off you find them blazing through in a track which launches them right into the main ideas of the album as you find them doing a track which brings in the classic eighties Funk grooves and the earlier Jazz (in the form of horns), and this is all topped off with something which shows even further originality with the use of the didgeridoo at sections through it.

**Five Stars**

2. “Too Young To Die”

Of all the songs on the album, I expect this one to be the one you are most likely to be familiar with. I have to say that I didn’t really know it that well, but the hook , in which he scats stands out as something you will remember it by as he shows how likely the people of the world are in order to display what a shame would be should they engage in another large war and take this from them.

**Five Stars**

3. “Hooked Up”

The beats in this one are initially led by the gentle bells and light percussion, and become progressively complex as the thing advances and you hear things such as trumpets coming into use as it goes along. By the time Jay Kay is in on it, you are just in a hype over the bass grooves and the bongo drumming so you just cannot resist dancing to it. It is a great one, and has them make the most of its fairly compressed duration.

**Five Stars**

4. “If I Like It, I Do It”

The grooves in this one are just too much as you feel the sounds of the wah-wah guitar bringing out a clear and distinctive late seventies kind of vibe, and it leads to them producing another killer song which really adds to the album as the band perform to their full potential with lots of different style, most notably the use of DJing to show that Hip Hop has gone on to influence this (in a role reversal as Funk was the foundation of Hip Hop music in the seventies and early eighties). It is just eel-good music from them here.

**Five Stars**

5. “Music Of The Mind”

This one has them going at it for a fair while as you hear this one lasting for over six minutes, and the band making the most out of this time to pull out all that is possible without the use of vocals from Jay Kay. It begins a gentle one before advancing into a breakdown later on and in the segment you hear a lot more of the Jazz side to them coming through and it makes for a great one by them with all these vibes running through it.

**Five Stars**

6. “Emergency on Planet Earth”

This titular song from the album has them perform a song which despite being based upon the same sort of energetic compositions as you hear at every other point in the album, this one has Jay Kay lead the thing by coming with lyrics which contrast greatly from this as he refers to how the rapid advancement of culture is detrimental to the world as a whole, and so as he is doing, going back to the Golden Ages is the only way to counteract this.

**Five Stars**

7. “Whatever It Is, I Just Can’t Stop”

The way that the percussion, from Nick Van Gelder, is done reminds me of the type of funky stuff which the likes of Parliament and Sly & The Family Stone would have come up with, and the style which would be adopted by the Hip Hop world in their early years and so this was clearly one of the reason why I felt it so much. From this you get Stuart Zender coming up with some retro bass grooves to take you back to the years which they are attempting to recreate as Jay Kay is overcome by the funkiness of it all, and it just forced to be taken over by the force of it all.

**Five Stars**

8. “Blow Your Mind”

On this album, it came as the third single, and it sees them do a tune which seesm to take influence from the sorts of Funk musicians who were a lot more connected to the Jazz side of things than they were with the Swing elements of it, and I felt that this made for a great one, and a good choice for a single as they just come together to show off even more concerning how they are able to compose the most original things.

**Five Stars**

9. “Revolution 1993”

This epic jam session from them last over ten minutes, and has them bring out absolutely everything they have to offer with not only the most organic sounds of live instrumentals (which where found in all other parts of the album) but also the use of some synth and electronic percussion to give off a more futuristic vibe than the order ones, and it gives them a chance to do a lot more than they could with any other. Jay Kay’s lyrics re as politically-charged as any other part of it, and it suits the fury the production works you up to.

**Five Stars**

10. “Didgin’ Out”

Here they describe the act of playing the didgeridoo at the dn of the album as “Didgin’ out”, and I have to say that it stands out so much, not for the fact that it uses this instrumental, or that it is fully instrumental, but more for the breaks which are used in it as it takes on the best types of beats you would have heard in Hip Hop at this time.

**Five Stars**

This should be considered a classic for music of its kind as it was so unexpected as a breakthrough at a time when things were attempting to move forward, and here Jamiroquai not only do this, but do this through the decision to give it a retro late seventies and eighties flare. There isn’t a reason not to listen to this as the quality levels are consistent throughout.  

...less