Jamie Lidell
- Issue #257 (July '05) | In Writing
- By: Rob Young | Featuring: Jamie Lidell
- Printable version
Unedited Transcript of the cover interview of the techno-soul crooner by Rob Young
RY: having seen you live at big venues, nice to see it in a small club
JL: I do like the small venues, I prefer them. Most of the artists I've ever met prefer a small venue. Because how can you be able to get anything to the people at the back - psychologically I think you're not projecting the same. If you know that physically you're just a speck, then gesture wise everything is minimised, and you're just reaching the people in the front row. It's great when you can see right to the back, at least you feel the reaction really fast and you see people a foot away from you. It's great.
RY: It does carry...
JL: I think because it's obvious that I'm actually doing stuff, and also you run the risk at big venues that I'm just this guy making sound, and it's just like, so what, because you don't get the franticness of me trying to keep control of everything... It's good just to feel that people are getting a waft of it...
RY: At Brussels you sampled the audience and made a rhythm track
JL: Yeah, clapping... I've always wanted to remember to do that... Mocky was like, you've got to get people to join in with you... He's always thinking, spreading the love like that, and I am too, but half the time I always feel like a beginner when I'm on stage,. you know, it always feels like anything could go wrong. It often does, but you know, I still feel like I haven't learnt so many crucial lessons. One of them was, remember, to reach out to people, take a moment to have a little meet and greet flavour in the show. I know from Kevin Blectum, I've done a lot of stuff with her, and Mocky's great with that, Gonzo's great with that, Peaches is great - they're all mates of mine and I love the way they get that intimacy going on. I lost my voice totally that night - I was sitting at the side of the stage before gong on going lalala, starting the scale and literally had nothing there. So weird - so Jeff got me a little whiskey and I was supping on it, remembering stories gone by of opera singers, that's the secret! Relax the larynx and stuff. Just about saw me through.
RY: it must have been a challenge to capture a sound on the record, you obviously thought about it differently from performance
JL: And you have to understand that I was fully aware of that, and the original idea was to release the straight album, and the live DVD. Which didn't work out at the end, because the label got a bit stressed out at the last minute. Cos units cost, and predicted sales weren't that great, so... that was a shame, because I felt like after such a long time away I could have delivered a nice big value pack kind of thing because I'd spent a lot of time in the studio trying to hone down, getting the live stuff on record. And it was never to my satisfaction. I always felt that the energy of the live show was somehow fundamentally missing, just as an audio file. But as soon as you saw it with the video attached, great, then you see why you have to hang on through these slightly dodgy patches, which is also really part of what I do - I'm glad that 5 do that, because 5 don't wanna do the perfect show, this flawless thing - I think it's really important to really honestly try and do something from the heart, at the moment. Sometimes it will be noisy, and low, or something. But if you don't do that then you're not really being honest to yourself. I don't like the idea of having a really fixed playlist and doing it time and time again - I've done that with bands and the worry is, eventually you get the perfect show, and rather than having that elation, you just look at each other and go, We've done it now - we can't do it any better. But it was a really conscious thing; the DVD will come out, hopefully by the end of the year...
JL: I do like the small venues, I prefer them. Most of the artists I've ever met prefer a small venue. Because how can you be able to get anything to the people at the back - psychologically I think you're not projecting the same. If you know that physically you're just a speck, then gesture wise everything is minimised, and you're just reaching the people in the front row. It's great when you can see right to the back, at least you feel the reaction really fast and you see people a foot away from you. It's great.
RY: It does carry...
JL: I think because it's obvious that I'm actually doing stuff, and also you run the risk at big venues that I'm just this guy making sound, and it's just like, so what, because you don't get the franticness of me trying to keep control of everything... It's good just to feel that people are getting a waft of it...
RY: At Brussels you sampled the audience and made a rhythm track
JL: Yeah, clapping... I've always wanted to remember to do that... Mocky was like, you've got to get people to join in with you... He's always thinking, spreading the love like that, and I am too, but half the time I always feel like a beginner when I'm on stage,. you know, it always feels like anything could go wrong. It often does, but you know, I still feel like I haven't learnt so many crucial lessons. One of them was, remember, to reach out to people, take a moment to have a little meet and greet flavour in the show. I know from Kevin Blectum, I've done a lot of stuff with her, and Mocky's great with that, Gonzo's great with that, Peaches is great - they're all mates of mine and I love the way they get that intimacy going on. I lost my voice totally that night - I was sitting at the side of the stage before gong on going lalala, starting the scale and literally had nothing there. So weird - so Jeff got me a little whiskey and I was supping on it, remembering stories gone by of opera singers, that's the secret! Relax the larynx and stuff. Just about saw me through.
RY: it must have been a challenge to capture a sound on the record, you obviously thought about it differently from performance
JL: And you have to understand that I was fully aware of that, and the original idea was to release the straight album, and the live DVD. Which didn't work out at the end, because the label got a bit stressed out at the last minute. Cos units cost, and predicted sales weren't that great, so... that was a shame, because I felt like after such a long time away I could have delivered a nice big value pack kind of thing because I'd spent a lot of time in the studio trying to hone down, getting the live stuff on record. And it was never to my satisfaction. I always felt that the energy of the live show was somehow fundamentally missing, just as an audio file. But as soon as you saw it with the video attached, great, then you see why you have to hang on through these slightly dodgy patches, which is also really part of what I do - I'm glad that 5 do that, because 5 don't wanna do the perfect show, this flawless thing - I think it's really important to really honestly try and do something from the heart, at the moment. Sometimes it will be noisy, and low, or something. But if you don't do that then you're not really being honest to yourself. I don't like the idea of having a really fixed playlist and doing it time and time again - I've done that with bands and the worry is, eventually you get the perfect show, and rather than having that elation, you just look at each other and go, We've done it now - we can't do it any better. But it was a really conscious thing; the DVD will come out, hopefully by the end of the year...