Shuffle: Unlikely Musical Connections

What do Jamie Smith’s skeletal beats and experimental production – the qualities that lend London’s The xx their uniquely haunting sound have in common with one of America’s best loved jazz composers of the 50s and 60s? The answer may lie in one of Brubeck’s most popular compositions of the early sixties, an experiment in an unlikely time signature, ⁷⁄₄ – meaning seven beats to the bar as opposed to the usual four, known as Unsquare Dance.

The piece opens with acoustic bass from Eugene Wright, who plays a steadily alternating blues pattern that continues throughout the piece, with Brubeck providing a short piano melody. However, this is soon replaced by a pattern of claps and rim shots – a style of bass and percussion remarkably similar the production prevalent in today’s house music, particularly Jamie xx’s sparse remix of Adele’s ubiquitous megahit, Rolling In The Deep.