British funkster Jamiroquai is officially back. After teasing a return following a nearly six year layoff, Jay Kay dropped the “Automaton” video on Friday (Jan. 27) and announced that the accompanying album is due March 31.
Opening with scenes of nuclear bomb mushroom clouds and an army of Jay Kay’s in glowing futuristic helmets, the dark video for the futuristic track pulses with the instantly recognizable Jamiroquai dance funk, splashed with a bit of Daft Punk robot rock groove. “All this love I felt for you/ Has gone away to another place (It’s a digital life)/ I put my faith in a digital world,” Jay Kay sings as his cybernetic character explores a bombed-out world that appears to have been destroyed by an atomic bomb.
The science fiction-inspired visual was directed by Charlie Lightening (Arcade Fire, Bjork) with Jay Kay offering up some creative direction, according to a release accompanying the clip for the first single from the group’s upcoming eighth album.
The singer even busts a bit of a rhyme toward the end of the track, rapping, “Hey, you got me down underground/ Gettin’ holed up in my cyberlounge/ As if I had time to break that down (Automaton)/ Whatever you can do I can override it” in a style that recalls the Afrika Bambaataa planet rocking grooves of the early 1980s.
