Jamie Lidell

If there was any doubt about Brit singer Jamie Lidell’s credentials as a top tier soul man in the genre’s purest traditions, such scepticism will surely be laid to rest with this companion set of bits and pieces born out of last year’s Multiply disc. The majority of Additions is taken up by retakes of cuts from the original record by a team of equally progressive producers and remixers including Matthew Herbert and Luke Vibert. The latter turns in a grimy mix of "A Little Bit More” that surpasses its predecessor with a dirty keyboard melody, snappy backbeat and cluttered, cut-and-paste vocal and audio samples over the hook. Herbert, surprising, underachieves on the two tracks he takes on, replacing the soul of title track "Multiply” with a cheery, child-like mix that loses much of the idea behind the original; going minimal for a version of "A Little Bit More” he fails to develop into anything substantial. The remixes, both good and bad, are all easily overshadowed, however, by the album’s three killer stripped-down live performances that leave you hanging on every one of Lidell’s Otis Redding-styled vocal phrasings. A complete live set might have been a far better promotional tool for a man with one of the best new voices in the genre.