The Wire

Jamie Lidell

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...

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RY: Does some of the album use musicians too or is it sampled?

JL: There\'s tiny drum samples, but everything is live - we recorded it all, but it took a long time. The guitar is Mocky, doing a lot of the stringed instruments, Gonzales on the piano... Two drummers... My mate Bill Youngman is also playing the guitar, more of the crazy styles. I play some of the bass... It was definitely in the mood for spreading around, cos I\'m definitely not one of those people who, like, although the way I play live would suggest that I\'m a total control freak - I am in a way - but at the same time I know my limits, and what\'s the point of trying to play the keys when there\'s Gonzales sitting there. I hate people who are like, I\'m playing everything! What\'s the point? The community aspect of music is really lacking sometimes nowadays, and the making of it is so great, when you open up, rather than use a sample, you just get someone to play. It\'s not necessarily gonna give you the results you want, and it\'s not necessarily going to sound good, specially when you\'re sampling from the golden era of sound recording, you know? You\'re guaranteed to press play and it\'ll sound good. But I tend to share the view that if you can avoid sampling something then you ought to. I\'m up for it all, and I like people who do real mash-ups, cut it up hard...

RY: Did the soul songs come about songwriting with those musicians or did they exist before?

JL: All very different, the evolution; of all the tracks. A lot of them I just had hanging around on my hard drive, as dark, broody, more allied to a Super_Collider edge, from my side of the project. Quite sombre grooves, dark, but with the same lyrics and melodies that ended up coming out on the more traditional arrangements. But after seeing Mocky and playing the tunes, and generally hanging out around his energy, and changing quite a lot in terms of ... I was realising that I just don\'t turn on a lot of electronic music in the morning and go, \'that\'s just what I wanna hear right now...\' And I really used to... So I was just really honest with myself and I was listening to my live shows and thinking, I wouldn\'t want to listen to this. Not just cos it was me, but I don\'t think, it wouldn\'t do me any favours to release it like this. I\'m not writing it off, cos it would mean that I would write music so fast, that I can jam and I have been doing that for years now, and I love it too. But I just wanted to make an album that would be dressed up and ready to go, but very much a morning listen and not a night... All the Super_Collider stuff, it was really great and I loved doing it, but it was really hard to find the right moment to know where that music sat in a life... we were taking adventures but we didn\'t really ourselves, I don\'t think, know what it was for, or how we even felt about the tracks. It\'s bizarre... that\'s always been my feeling anyway I can\'t speak for Cristian.

RY: Feeling of approaching chaos on Super_Collider

JL: We had a lot of fun... Back in the day, I think it was really liberating for me and Cris to get back out on the road with more musicians, after being cooped up in the studio writing that stuff, going out and playing it live was just like crazy release. Just took it, enjoyed it...

RY: A lot of your early music was confrontational and you seem to have moved to an inclusive approach, a celebration that involves the people

JL: I wanted to do something that once and for all would present me as a singer to a wider audience. It was very conscious thing. I don\'t feel in any way a regret that I\'ve sold out, cos I actually learnt much more doing this record than I ever would have done if I\'d done another glitched-out record, you know? I wouldn\'t learn anything from that. I wouldn\'t actually have expanded my horizons in any way doing that. I might have made certain people happy, but at the end of the day I felt like... I\'m now at quite a confusing crossroads actually, that\'s for sure. Cos obviously it does present me with a lot of new choices now, people are really excited about the record from a more popular standpoint, major labels included.

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RY: How much are you prepared to sacrifice?

JL: That\'s what the live DVD was all about, cos it\'s fully uncut. It\'s amazing, I\'m so proud of that as well, it\'s been a year\'s worth of work for me and Geoff, Pablo. It\'s all on there, from slow jam to full-on noise. Uncut, live, fully raw, fully impossible to recreate - by me or anyone else. I could never do that stuff again. I\'ve tried, but there\'s no way I could repeat something from another show. In fact I\'ve often fallen into traps, trying to reconstruct, cheekily pretend that I\'m doing it again afresh, just remembering an old recording that\'s been particularly good, a lick... but it never works twice, it\'s weird. So usually the ones on there are the first moments I\'d arrived at, ideas. So you get the idea, you probably would have been a lot more on the same page with me if you\'d seen the double pack, the light and dark side, it was all tied in with the packaging idea, I had quite a major league plan to do it, I see Beck\'s just come out with a DVD/CD double... I was really heading for that, was really disappointed that we didn\'t get to do it.

RY: It took me by surprise at first... the mood, I know you love Marvin Gaye, there\'s that feeling of the pressure of the city pushing out a flowering of soul and passion...

JL: Yeah, I just wanted that, I didn\'t want to indulge in any... I didn\'t want to linger on anything too... to dark. Cos I don\'t want that in my life any more, that\'s the truth. I don\'t like listening to Can any more, I notice. Just at this time in my life. I LOVE Can, you know? I was always fully into listening to that stuff, but now, I\'m finding that it stresses me out a little bit. I think because I\'m so exposed to sound. Sun Ra is different, because he brings a joy, even to the noise. Noise has to have the joy too - then it\'s cool. But I\'m not in the mood to hear aggro noise that just seems to have a certain kind of intention to it. And it\'s definitely preaching to the converted audience already. And I don\'t want to get my self misunderstood here. You know, I\'m definitely always coming from a jazz angle... so when noise comes, it\'s definitely coming from the Sun Ra angle. Although having said that, I was making Techno back in the day, long before I heard of Sun Ra. I\'m confused about my identity, you know? I would be a liar if I said that I was all clear in my head. Definitely pretty schizophrenic.

RY: The lyrics are great on this one...

JL: I concentrated on them a lot.

RY: Despite that joy, they seem to have evolved out of some darker experiences...

JL: It\'s true, even the most positive tracks... I notice that on one of the tracks I was singing last night - Multiply - it was actually quite a dark message in a way - it\'s more like Tracks Of My Tears, put on the brave front, but actually you\'re having a nightmare. Sad as it is, I feel that a lot. I\'m not as happy as I feel I ought to be in life sometimes - I feel that great things can happen... I don\'t know whether it\'s the English cynicism that\'s always there, ever present in me, or that I feel that I don\'t deserve things from parental pressures... You know, however the psychological thing is in me, I never feel satisfied, I never feel I have the right to enjoy moments.

RY: Caught between myself and my shadow...

JL: A bit like that, and I hate that. But that is it - that is what I feel. And I don\'t know how I can change that, but I want to. And part of changing that is trying to realise that by always presenting myself and living in a world that has a certain kind of sound, it rubs off on you like a perfume in a room, it becomes your scent. If you hang out with moody bastards, you\'re going to be a moody bastard, you know? So hanging out with Mocky and hanging out with positive characters who\'ve got a different vision of music is really bringing me back to realising that my roots are always in jazz - it never really went away, I can learn so much about music now from him and Gonzo, shit that I always wanted to know I\'m learning from them. So this is the start of my learning curve, I\'m really back at square one again. Which is awesome, but also daunting because I see where they\'re at, and although I\'ll always have a different feeling for music, which is always going to be my own...

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RY: What about \"Music Will Never Last\"?

JL: That was a remix from Matt Herbert actually, so the words are from one of his songs. There\'s a line that Dani says, \"Music will never last\", it\'s from a remix of the Audience. But I took all the words from the track and put them into a program that randomizes the words, and I kept on doing that until I could find some sense and put a little bit of a humaniser on the computer generated text. So that was a remix, I got Accidental to agree to let me have that.

RY: What\'s \'the nudge\'?

JL: I\'m often sitting there with Mocky and a lot of people who are using computers have that issue of, you\'ve done a track... [we] had a lot of these problems with this album, with drum tracks and so on, where the feel and everything was good but obviously it\'s off, and you spend so much time nudging these little Lego bricks around on screen, and me and Mocky would always look at each other and sort of sing this song, like, \"Is this music?\", Is this what music is, now? Because sometimes it gets so bizarre, you\'re just looking at this arrangement on the screen, and going... It\'s usually when you\'ve been in the studio a bit too long, and you\'re going a bit delirious, it\'s just these little blocks are meant to be your music. And you can of course infinitely shunt them around, and that\'s the nudge, but it\'s just you\'re stuck in this little world of \'to nudge or not to nudge\', you know? It\'s like this infinite dilemma, it\'s crazy - if you do nudge, it\'s gonna take a long time... I mean, Super_Collider was all nudge, for example. Very much like concrète in the way it was... drawn. Not much of it was played - very much sculpted. Whereas you\'re playing with Mocky and the musicians, I was just like, \'Man, the whole reason we\'re rocking so hard is that we\'re playing this stuff. So let\'s play it. Why do we have to cut it up?\' I was determined not to get the scissors out too much. I\'ve been really feeling Madlib a lot - that whole Yesterday\'s New Quintet, I really like that stuff, it\'s really loose, and I love it. The swing and all that is amazing.

RY: You must find it hard to know when things are finished.

JL: Yeah, like everyone - never know when to put the pen down, it\'s true. That\'s why it took me so long to finish the record, man. The record got to a certain stage and I did some rough mixes to send to Steve at Warp, and he was pretty into it... he had his own reservations about what I\'d done, pretty similar to your own. Like about what I was perceived to be now, and what this record represents. At that point these were rough mixes. But that was still quite a lot of work to get them that far, and then I went on to mix them again with a guy in Paris, a studio where Gonzo and 5 do all their stuff, the Jane Birkin stuff was done. A big, proper studio. So we mixed it there, and again I learnt some crazy lessons from those guys, they\'ve all been really amazing and supportive, they loved the music, and they can feel my talent in some way that I really needed. I needed to have that nod from another world, like, you\'ve got something. Not that I needed the ego boost, but I needed it at this point in my career, to get the sense of, I can present my voice, and it does work, just that fundamental question is something that always troubles me. Can you really do it? Is it OK to do it? And definitely in England, you always get kicked down, very much the culture of the cynic, everything\'s got to be a joke, and you\'ve got to be up for taking the piss out of yourself. Which I am, but...

RY: You walk the line between pastiche and deeply felt... you get possessed by the music in stage

JL: When I was working with bands, I didn\'t have to put so much on the line. I was just delivering a verse over a track. I do that over a couple of songs on the live show, and I feel massively vulnerable and quite awkward when I do those things, but in a way, having all the table and all the machines is a crutch. I\'m often trying to get encouraged to be more playful with the crowd, certain of my peers are watching me and trying to help me progress. I\'d like to be, every time I feel like an amateur every time I go up on stage, I don\'t feel that I\'ve learnt anything. I feel that it\'s my first time, every time. So weird man. I know how the machines work, but I\'m starting a track again from a blank sheet, and I\'m like, what is music? I can have a moment like that, as I did yesterday, I\'m kind of getting it, it\'s not quite working, and then I\'m like, oh god, I\'m on stage! Literally. If people knew the kind of things that go through my head, they\'d be, God! I\'m surprised that I can instil a kind of confidence in people. I\'ve used the same set-up for years, so I ought to know it by now. I feel a bit cheap using the same thing, but I did make that thing. I don\'t know man, I was always really conscious in interviews that I can allow myself to analyse my psychology too much, which I\'m not the expert in doing. I just know what I feel when I\'m up there. And the only moments when I feel like I\'m doing anything really valuable is when I\'m not thinking, what am I gonna do next? And time passes and it\'s got to this point and it\'s just like a ramp that just happens magically, and each layer helps each other layer up, and each other layer goes like this [simulating mountain climbing] I\'ve got another hole to go to here, I can do it like this, and then we\'re rolling again, and then we\'ll just drop a verse, and off you go. Recently I\'ve been having interviews and photo shoots before the show, and everyone\'s been hanging around and I\'ve had no moments backstage, I really need a half hour meditation basically. Before I go out - just to flatten my brain, reset and get the voice going and generally remember what I\'m about to do. It\'s so important. And people are like, Ah, come on mate, just chill out and go on stage and do your thing, and I\'m like, I can\'t do that. It\'s crazy to admit it when I\'m about to do big shows like Montreux Jazz and that.

RY: What\'s the most memorable show?

JL: It happens quite a lot actually - every three or four shows I get it really strong. I had a show recently in a small part of Sicily, Catania, when I was determined to have a a good show, because I\'d had an awful one the night before in Milan, when I was soul searching really hard because a really bad part of being a solo performer is that I can really brood heavily. If I have a bad show, I wonder what I\'m doing and where I\'m going and why the hell after all this time could I be so able to fall down and not deliver. And that can be totally gutting basically. So I was in that mood when I arrived in Catania, and just before I went on I was like, I\'m not going to go out like that, I\'m gonna give it absolutely EVERYTHING I\'ve got right now - just for me. Because I wanna do this, and it was just an amazing flow, where I was just giving it more energy than I could ever imagine, every verse I would do fully, and everyone was really happy. And I just felt afterwards, I\'d redeemed myself. But it\'s like a personal battle sometimes - I wanna excel. If you\'re gonna stay in it why not try to improve. At the same time, I\'ve been rocking the same show for ages, and I think if I come back to Berlin and come out on stage with my equipment again, people are gonna go, Oh, I\'ve seen this. I can\'t milk that forever. I still feel I haven\'t learnt it at the same time. So it\'s not like I\'m trying to justify doing the same show, but I still feel I\'ve got a lot to learn. Until that moment when I think this method is redundant, I\'ll still pursue it a little bit longer. But I\'m not writing out the prospect of having a band and taking it out on the road. I\'d love to do that too.

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RY: What kind of band would it be

JL: I don\'t know, I\'d like to incorporate the kind of techniques I\'ve been learning. Being able to run with the moment, but still have a sense of a song. It\'s not a new thing, it\'s a total jazz thing, obviously, but without handing solos around from A to B to C. And without necessarily stepping hard on the toes of those great characters that were doing that. Doing something very modern. Having it sonically able to be totally cut up and glitched out for a minute,and then suddenly smooth, and texturally a lot more varied than I can do with the voice. It\'s something that frustrates me. I\'ve done shows with Gonzo and Mocky and a few musicians, who play some chords with me, run with my ideas, cos they\'re great as well, they can improvise no problem, so I can go, OK, just hold this down for a minute, and I can definitely still lead, and they\'ll be ready to back me up, and then when I\'m losing my energy, take it themselves. It\'s just a question of who. We\'ll see.

RY: What was the song you did at the beginning?

JL: It was a little remix I\'d done. I like it to start shows with, because I was feeling a little bit moody backstage and had this crazy hassle outside with someone going, Get us in! It\'s sold out. I\'ve paid £20 to come down, and we\'re gutted now... and I was like, oh, don\'t tell me that now, I have to go on in 15 minutes, and the photographer was putting me in the back of a cab, and saying this will be cool, for XLR8R... Stressin hard, man. So I thought I\'d play this little doowop track, I did a remix for these guys called the Yusque [?] Orchestra from Belgium. Really like their stuff, it\'s almost like a school band or something. They asked me to do a remix, and I said, yeah, and I was sitting on it for ages an realised I wasn\'t going to be able to do something, just programming the sounds, I\'m really out of practice with that, don\'t enjoy that way of working any more. So I just made up a song that used their bed sounds, and sung over the top. And they love it.

RY: The lyrics are like theme for you...

JL: Back to the bubble? Exactly. I always thought that as well, because at the end of the song it\'s like, \'Now is the time I long for every night, the time when my mind can take flight\', and actually yeah, I feel really good when I sing those lines before I\'m about to do a show, because I can put on a little bit of Vegas tramp, I was really wooden at that point, partly about to feel it and partly stressing hard still, from the day. That\'s what I mean about I\'m not a pro. If I was a pro I\'d be coming out and giving the mask, but I\'m quite glad I\'m not like that in a way, cos then I couldn\'t do my stuff the way I do it.

RY: As soon as it turns plastic it\'s no good to anyone...

JL: And it does have the tendency to do that if you\'re not in a good mood. Cos you go through the motions inevitably, because you can\'t find inspiration as much as at other times. But the inspirations always comes with a bad soundcheck - any musician will tell you that. Bad soundcheck = good show. Good soundcheck = bad show. That\'s the fundamental rule no 1. and also stressful day, nightmare of a day = good show. Musically. Cos you\'ve got a lot to vent. And if you\'ve had an amazingly chilled day, and everything\'s relaxed, the shows often lack lustre and get a bit blasé.

RY: You;ve spoken before about Sly Stone, his music being up close and in your face - Pablo\'s visuals do that for your music...

JL: Yeah, cool [like he\'s not considered this before]... Yeah, definitely for the big venues, cos small venues - I was really happy with what he was up to last night because that\'s how we always used to rock it back in the day. Just prankin and being mates and not worrying too much about anything, just jamming and having fun. The bigger shows, a lot of the communication that you can have gets lost, so it\'s a twist on the old rock idea, adding all of Jeff\'s crazy flavours to it, and going beyond it with his general expertise and love of that world. He\'s exploring techniques with the lights and costumes, and trying to add that element of chaotic glam, I suppose, that somehow fits with the scrapple of the overall thing, you know? Hopefully without looking too over the top, or too loose.

RY: Do you feel different in the costumes

JL: It really helps actually. Last night I was in the mood for keeping it a little bit more personal. I\'m more and more into that actually. Dressing down and... I played a show in my glasses the other week. Which I feel a bit weird doing. Sometimes T-shirt and jeans, you know, small venues, and it\'s really nice because it\'s obvious that you\'re not showing off, you\'re putting on a show. But sometimes you really need that peacock flavour that showmanship\'s about. It sometimes helps to look down at yourself and go, \'Whoah, I\'m not the guy that was sitting backstage a few minutes ago drinking a water, I\'m definitely this other persona, on stage, doing a stage show\'. I don\'t mind dancing so much, I feel less inhibited when I\'m not \'me\'. Thinking about my taxes, and... And it\'s also nice, I\'ve always been a big believer that as an audience member it\'s funny, or it\'s over the top, it\'s part of the cabaret of going out for me, it always was. When people look crazy.

RY: I guess that had its roots in the scene in Brighton...

JL: Yeah, for sure, we used to really go for it in those days. [laughs] It was more like Funkadelic style at times, properly over the top - wicked, man! I mean, no one got it - in a place like Brighton, with a gay scene that was really flamboyant, thank god for that, otherwise it would be like Ben Sherman and whatever. I like a bit of that.

RY: I pulled out that Trash compilation... there\'s beatboxing, jazz samples, so there is a pre-echo of what you\'re doing now even in 97.

JL: Oh yeah, there is a bit of a line, the thing is, I\'m doing an interview with Beatbox.com soon, but I\'m really not a beatboxer, I don\'t consider it part of my skills. I really need it as an immediate way to get up and get going, but I don\'t learn routines. I\'m unashamedly using effects and stuff... Yeah, nice one man, thanks for doing so much research...

RY: I never saw any of the events in Brighton, but...

JL: Now I\'m in Berlin and I hear kiddies getting into, still getting into that space race of beat cut-ups and every now and again I\'ll see characters like Jason Forrest... He\'s great, Jason, I really like him... and all the music he\'ll play on his label, I think, man, that was Brighton back in 96 or whatever. As far as I\'m concerned, that was... we caned that, I can\'t get back there. I can really enjoy some of it, but that space race approach to glitching out beats and so hard and frantic is very much a battle thing. It\'s played itself out for me. I think there were so many people doing it so well, time to find another angle. That\'s why with this album, I consciously decided I wasn\'t gonna time stamp it deliberately, just for the sake of it. Everyone\'s like, \'It\'s not the 70s, why are you doing a retro album?\' Stop hassling me, I don\'t wanna glitch it out - is it gonna make it better? Just because it\'s a sample that\'s retriggered, or you\'re gonna chop up the form and filter it off, whatever tricks you could employ to give the modern nod, it\'s like, yes, but it\'s a gimmick. Unless it\'s inherently part of the songwriting process from the beginning, that would be an interesting approach, but editing post-writing, gives a certain glitch aesthetic that I also feel is played out. I don\'t particularly feel the urge to go there. And it would definitely have probably helped me out a lot with this record, had I gone there. I thought, well, you know what, I\'ll just let people do that after the event, with the remix styles, let them take it where they wanna go. By not contributing to the world of new songs, I wanted to contribute to the world of new songs. Weirdly enough I just wanted to write new songs that were just basic, and then afterwards they have the potential to be turned into these modern monsters [where a] Frankenstinian approach can be applied. Super_Collider wrote with that from the beginning. We took an eternity, some of the fluidity of songwriting that I\'ve learnt now was always lacking in that process, because it was done like small chink by small chunk, and the overview is hard to achieve often. Meticulous soundworlds... We definitely managed to achieve that we knew we had, so we knew we had something special, but like I say, I always felt like...

RY: Does the group still exist?

JL: Yeah, we started to do some more stuff in September, with one ambitious idea to make a record in a month. But using the band that was coming live so we could just jam it out and go for it... It was partially successful. Although it was perhaps a little overambitious. And the fact that all the people that were part of the band are all strong characters, and all more than capable of writing music in their own right. Cris and I not having anything pre planned was a problem because suddenly you\'re confronted with loads of people that you respect and you love and they\'re your friends and you wanna jam with them, but in a way everyone needs to have a little bit of a thread to run with. Because we were all a bit afraid to make the first move, a bit too polite with each other, it was quite a weird experience. But definitely we got some really cool things down. I hope we can move on with it, I\'d like to do another album. It\'s just those albums were painstakingly made. I actually can\'t see a time in the near future where I\'d have that amount...

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RY: I\'d like to hear a live album

JL: Yeah, that\'s what we wanted to do. Tried to use some technology that\'s been lying around, Cris is really amazing at doing that sort of stuff now as well.

RY: When did you first discover your voice?

JL: Yeah, I get asked that question a lot, and I don\'t know how to answer. Of course, crudely, I think it\'s really obvious actually. It\'s just one of those things that gets encouraged. At least with me it is. I don\'t know if I can generalise about things like that. There\'s a lot of music in my family - from my mum\'s side especially, cos she was a singer. [She sang] with orchestras, philharmonics and stuff. So that was very much in the house as I was growing up. And there was a lot of song in the house. So it was common for me to sing and not feel weird about it, and I notice that a lot of my other friends were really shy about singing. So there was never a stigma attached to it. Just that alone, plus the fact that I was always able to sing in key, and I obviously felt music from an early age. That\'s it. That\'s all I was. And then my voice broke and I thought, wow, I won\'t sing again. And I got really into electronic music, and caned loads of drugs, and probably couldn\'t have sung even if I\'d wanted to. And it wasn\'t cool to sing, somehow. I didn\'t really know how to sing. It\'s taken me a long time to find a voice that I felt comfortable with. I love that music and obviously a lot of things come with that, like, why are you trying to be like that, and I ask myself those questions, but the bottom line is, I do really feel it and I love it too, so after a while I started to think, I can\' be bothered to feel bad about it, I just want to love what I feel, and that\'s still really hard to do. Every artist, no matter how much they feel, they still have to justify a lot of things to themselves and to others. Either at the time or after the event. I\'m perhaps a little too conscious of those things actually. I\'d probably be a more prolific artist if I just let go a bit more...

RY: Did you ever take any lessons

JL: I was very young. Before my voice broke. Singing like at school. My music teachers at my primary school were crazy, writing and publishing music books and stuff, so I was really lucky. He was an amazing guy, publishing kids\' songbooks, and trying them out with me. It was part of a small crew involved with that. Had a lot of nurturing at that time in my life actually. That\'s definitely where it came from. It\'s weird - isn\'t that great, that school had that effect on me... and I remember at school that time when you have a career day: \'so what do you really want to do Jamie?\' and of course at the time I was feeling a lot of pressure from my dad, and I was pretty bright at school or whatever, was taking the scientific route, and I was even starting to take my degree in Physics, and was kind of going along like that, but I remember there was a day at school when I was like, I really want to do a music career. And I remember the day when I just thought to myself, Why do I feel weird to say that? I thought, I feel like I want to say that with confidence now, and I don\'t want to think about where I\'m going from where I\'ve been pushed. But it\'s weird the way things turn out. It could have all turned out so differently, each step of the way, it\'s so random in a way. Even though I love music, I can easily imagine not doing any of it. And I had crazy lucky breaks.

RY: I read that you studied Philosophy briefly, in Bristol.

JL: Well after doing the year of physics I got really sick, and spent six months in bed - crazy glandular fever moment. After that I could continue with physics, but I wasn\'t really up for it - couldn\'t handle the prospect of it. I was taking philosophy as a subsidiary - had to pass my exams in physics at the end of the year to drop it, which is bizarre. But coming out of this illness, I studied like crazy to pass the end of year exams in physics, which I did, and then I dropped it and did philosophy, and I was so much happier. I was up for socialising, cos I\'d come from the sticks in England, you know, so comparatively a place like Bristol was ripe with opportunity and the craziness of university coupled with that, overwhelming, and I couldn\'t handle the reality of the physics degree, which was so much fucking work.

RY: I wondered if you drew on that somehow for the lyrics, as they have quite compressed sentiments/ideas

JL: Yeah, I suppose... it\'s true. I was really conscious, because I was living in Germany actually. I didn\'t want the lyrics to suffer the Super_Collider effect of too many metaphors. I didn\'t want them to be endlessly hiding their true colours. I thought, if you don\'t have anything to say, often that\'s what you do. Not that that\'s what happened with Super_Collider, cos that\'s \'what I was trying to get towards, and I like the facto that it wasn\'t lit so strong. It was like, sometimes it\'s good to hint at something rather than being blatant about it. But with this album I thought, you\'ve just got to say what you think, and don\'t worry about hiding any more. I remember reading a lot about that, people saying that metaphor after metaphor, it becomes a crutch, and I was noticing that audiences in Europe weren\'t understanding me at all, and I thought that\'s a shame so I want to make these lyrics clearer, get to the essence of the meaning - just lay it bare in a way. They\'re still not that clear, but still a lot clearer than it ever was. It\'s pretty clear. Even like that first song I did, The City, that was the first song I ever did - three years ago or something. I took it to the absolute limits: how crude can I be without being redundant, and that\'s probably the crudest on the album. But I noticed that when I started to play it in Germany, it had exactly the effect that I was hoping for - people were swaying, I like that song, The City - it was clear what it was about and for the first time I noticed that people were coming back to me after the show talking about the lyrics rather than... I never got that with Super_Collider, no one knew what the hell it was on about. Even in England. So it was definitely trying to reach out to the fact that I\'m not very popular in England, I\'m much more popular in Europe.

RY: That song sounds like something off What\'s Goin On - that whole album\'s about inner city pressure

JL: That was at a time when I was really unhappy in Berlin, and I was skint. Quite amazing how things turned around for me. I wrote that song in 2001, so it\'s been hanging around for a long time...

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RY: How come you ended up there

JL: It\'s Berlin. And London before that - much more London, actually. Just like, just got that feeling that I hate cities. Sometimes I get that, fucking hate them - they just eat you up, and they\'re just this invisible thing, and you just, it\'s obvious that institutions are chewing you up and spitting you out, and you feel so... I\'m a country boy, grew up in a small village man, it\'s still hard for me to feel at home in a bustling metropolis. I feel awkward. I\'m quite a dreamer so I haven\'t got the speed of sense that\'s required in the city. That\'s why I like Berlin now, actually. Because it\'s really like living in a village, where I live. It\'s got all the trappings of the city... [Kreuzberg] I just nip down the road and see all my friends.....

RY: Will you be there for some time, is it a solid base

JL: [hesitates] dunno. Actually, yeah... [guarded] I suppose I always have these questions, like, say I got involved with someone and we wanted to have a kid, that\'s probably when I\'d ask myself that question, and slow down... I can\'t speak such good German, I\'m living in a quite crazy world... Like a bubble world, in general. I get there, all my mails and my business is in English, and the gigs are promoters, and English is the common language obviously. So the majority of the time is spent dealing with stuff like that, specially as I\'m only really there for a week or two a month. So there\'s not really much time. Or need, actually, bizarrely enough, for me to speak German. Specially as the level of general English speaking is really good. It\'s funny, because it\'s exactly what my dad did when he lived in Holland, and I was always thinking he was so lazy, why didn\'t he learn, but now I\'m on the other side of it. If there was a kid on the way, and I was thinking about what schools to put it in, I would probably have to come back to England - which I would do quite happily in a way. If I was a bit better off and felt a bit more secure, I wouldn\'t mind. But I\'m still just about getting by, wouldn\'t say I was comfortably off - so London is a daunting prospect.

RY: Maybe you need that city pressure for the music to come... it wouldn\'t be there if you moved to a village?

JL: I\'d like to try that actually. But I think I need other musicians around now. I\'d be interested to see what would happen if we all went out on a road trip, all the characters that I like. And we all hung out in places and see what happens. Maybe some great music would come out - I\'m sure it would. But the way all those characters are, they\'re all quite focused songwriters in their own way, so the Super_Collider experience is something to learn from. Democracy in music is a weird thing - doesn\'t really work actually. You\'ve got to have a leader/

RY: And are you comfortable in that role?

JL: No. It\'s one of the reasons I don\'t have a band. I don\'t like that role particularly. I\'m quite funny with people in general, I\'m not very clear. I\'d like to be able to fulfil that role. Maybe if I had the right kind of people around that could obviously believe in what I\'m doing, then it could come more naturally than I imagine. I think the nature of musicians is, there are egos everywhere, and if you tell a guitarist you don\'t like the way they are playing, or you hint that, they can just say, well you fucking play it then. And then you think, well, you\'re playing my song. And all that stuff starts up, and I\'m not really very good - I think I\'d be too stern, or too blunt. Dissatisfied. And then not able to explain what I wanted and then changing my mind every five seconds like I\'m liable to do.

RY: you need to be James Brown and Fela Kuti - a dictator...

JL: Yeah... Sun Ra, too... a benevolent dictator, basically.

RY: You\'ve always worked within a community, a social world.

JL: It\'s crucial really. And to give a feeling to where you\'re at, musically, the surroundings. Berlin is the backdrop to this album, you know? The fact that we would be playing in tiny bars, jamming songs like me and Mocky, it\'s such a good time - and this is the music that people are really feeling, and when we just do a straight song, and I\'m singing and wailing, people are really feeling that, whereas when everything is presented with some distance, or more like a proper song, you get a reaction, but it\'s a crazy feeling. It rubs off on you, and I wanted to bring a bit of that to the album. Berlin\'s been great for that - such a relief to be there actually, compared to Brighton. My friends in Brighton are great, but just the general negativity that surrounds... that attitude of, why are you tying to do this, seems to be inherent in a certain kind of English person - what are you trying to prove? Berlin has never given me that feeling, it might not be going down very well, but...

RY: People don\'t value their culture here, there\'s always an initial cynicism... this record fights against that in a way

JL: I definitely tried to crank up the warm jets [laughs]

RY: With Warp, was that a good relationship?

JL: {hesitates] Obviously with a record like this, it\'s pushing... things a little bit. Identities get a little bit blurry. But I think that\'s important. It\'s exactly why I wanted to do an album like this as well. I didn\'t want to come back with the most predictable album for me, which would have been the album that Warp would have been really happy with, it probably would have been an amazing career move for me as well. But somehow something inside me was like, I don\'t want to do it like that. Cos then if I... It\'s good, It\'s good with Warp, but... It was definitely a shock, but I think now everyone is warming to it, which is great. From the reactions I\'ve had, it\'s well done for making some beautiful songs, and that\'s great, that\'s all I was trying to do. Not really tried to make a crazy groundbreaking album, maybe, but for me it\'s groundbreaking to do a record that feels like it\'s got some listenability and you can listen to it more than once. It\'s just a load of novelties thrown together that can make you feel like, wow, we\'re living in the future. I don\'t want to hear that again. But that\'s what I find with so much electronic music. I\'m impressed for the first two listens. It\'s the space race flavor that I don\'t dig. But I do love electronic stuff, and I think the harmonic field needs to be opened out and that\'s where the electronics can do a lot. And I do really enjoy those kind of electronic artists.

RY: It\'s the flavour of the early tape experiments in your music - I know you like Tod Dockstader, that feeling of joyfully discovering the boundaries

JL: Who knows what\'s gonna come next? It might be an incredibly hardcore burst of adolescent energy, it might be a really crazy pop record... I\'m up for all of it, I\'m just gonna see what comes out next, what feels right. I don\'t have a master plan. But don\'t tell the label that.

RY: When you\'re recording at home, do you still get that sense of losing yourself in the music?

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JL: ... Gonzo had had his piano stuff transcribed, and it\'s quite ornate, so I was thinking, great, I was just gonna jam, how I do the live shows, just go for it. And get a little audience in, and get a little vibe on, and really push myself to spend a few hours, find the best moments, get it all transcribed and then get it played by a bunch of people and see if I can\'t get a really natural crossover between my mind and musicians. It could really be good. The first track on the album I did completely like that, actually. I wrote it totally singing it from start to finish. Then I played it to Mocky and I was like, OK man, I need you to play the bass like this. And the bass was all over the place, it was stream of consciousness style, on the bass. But then I said I want it exactly like that, but we looped four bar sections, and he\'ll just play each four bars, nailing them, doing take after take until we got it, and keep moving through the song. Then we\'d play it back, and sure enough there it was. Because it didn\'t feel totally stilted, because the flow in the first place was really natural and flowed along really well. That was great, an eye opener, and you know what you\'re heading towards as well, cos a lot of the time the music\'s frustrating because you\'re in space, and we know the chord changes and everything, but as for the way you\'re going to play it...

RY: Some of the sounds on the record sound lovingly recreated as the sound of Motown - was that an accident?

JL: Bizarrely... was it an accident? No. And it was that kind of Motown thing that I unashamedly wanted to bring back, because I thought rather than sample it, no one can create that sound again, stands to reason. Even the guys that played that music, the funk brothers, they couldn\'t get that sound again somehow. So, it wasn\'t that, but I really wanted that essence. Partly due to the fact that I met this drummer that I\'d been hanging out with a lot in Berlin, called Daniel Raymond Garney [?]. He\'s a crazy enthusiast and general nutter, so... and the way he plays is pretty ghetto, loose and raggedy. A lot of that early Motown stuff is not tight - it\'s pretty to the point, pinning the beat. I\'ve heard multitrack recordings of what\'s going on - Heard It Through The Grapevine and stuff, I\'ve had a chance to listen to the individual parts, which is crazy, a mad privilege to hear that.

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RY: How did that happen?

JL: Through a mate of mine, he had it from some unknown source, it\'s one of those internet mysteries, somehow he got hold of it, and it\'s amazing to hear. And River Deep, Mountain High as well. So I\'ve got all of those. Just listening through, and thought, how are they making the rhythm track? This is after I\'d done the album and everything was finished. And I was surprised, I thought, You know what? We didn\'t do too bad, because our raw tracks sounded pretty close to this. So I\'ve learnt a lot of techniques with mics, but I\'m no expert, man, and we did it on a low budget, and we had no one engineering it, it was just made and this guy Dan. One mic here, one mic here, and just try it. Keeping that Sunday afternoon spirit to the recording process, till we had something really warm sounding. And it\'s to do with the spill, actually, the fact that each mic picks up everything. That\'s how they did it, too. Every rhythm part in Motown seems to have been recorded at the same moment, so you don\'t record drums seperately to a click without the guitar and bass. The rhythmic part is linked, part of a single coherent world, and that\'s how we did it. That really makes the difference. Cos somehow the spillover on the mics is part of that as well, and gels it all together and you don\'t get this real sound of musical void... This crazy ice cold...

RY: It worked well with Prince but that\'s about all

JL: Yeah, because it is a cold thing. And other things weren\'t recorded like that, and they have another feeling, have to bring the warmth in another way.

RY: I heard you were in a band called Balzac...

JL: They were just some crazy characters in Brighton who were always playing at this amazing night called Monkey\'s Lounge. Had quite a lot of notoriety, and I popped in there a few nights. I was pretty young, in my early twenties, and that was back in the day where I was really not afraid to get up on the mic with a band I didn\'t know and start jamming. If they were up for it. And they were all really up for that. So I had my introduction like that - got on stage with them on the night and started to jam. I really loved them, and still love those guys, they\'re awesome. One of the guys, Matt Yee-King, you might know of, and another James Stephenson, has had some success with that band Chungking recently. Two other guys Mike and Johnny... One of those amazing bands, actually - super talented, Zappa-esque, insane song structures that were just so ambitious,and we pulled it off - it was rocking! Thinking back on it, if we had left Brighton and done gigs outside Brighton, it probably would have blown up, but that\'s what I\'m talking abut , Brighton, it holds you down. You think you\'re not really capable of moving on. So even though relatively speaking we were getting quite a good following at the time... I guess that was before Brighton got recognised as the hub of the new bands scene. We were doing our thing... It\'s great, I miss those days, we had a real laugh doing that. I definitely learnt how to sing with those guys. But I listened to those early demos a while ago, and noticed how strong my voice was. Because we\'d always play these gigs, and I\'d always have to be belting it out of PAs. Again, and again and again till my voice hardened up. Now, I can\'t sing that hard - I was better in those days. Which is crazy. We were really good.

RY: How did you meet Cristian?

JL: Well, I was making music here in London, with these guys called Subhead, rocking around Shoreditch, hanging out, and going to these parties called Growth that were organised, amazing, the best Techno parties that I ever went to - I was lucky to be part of that actually, looking back at it now - back in 94/95, when that scene was really exciting, really like a growth time, and out of meeting those guys I heard Cristian\'s stuff cos we were buying a lot of records and checking all the new releases... great time actually, I really felt part of a scene for the first time, and feeling like I wanted to contribute to the space race in a way. Cos it really was evolving in a way it\'s not any more, unfortunately. So hearing Cristian\'s stuff, I thought, out of all the people that are doing this, this guy is by far the best. This stuff is really amazing, how the hell does he do this? So I was determined to meet him, cos he was just like my favourite producer. So I went to Brighton with the express purpose of meeting him, and funnily enough, I met him on the first day that I arrived, at Brighton Festival. I saw a Tresor bag on the ground, and I asked the owner of the bag whether she was Cristian\'s sister, and she told me, no, but she\'s Cristian\'s girlfriend. Oh, all right... And she was like, Who are you? And I was like, Well, I\'ve been making these records in London, with Subhead, and she was like, Oh no, I can\'t believe it, Cristian\'s just been playing your record at Love Parade and it was an amazing moment, the highlight of his show. So my timing was perfect. And then we met each other and got on really well, started to think about getting the studio together pretty soon afterwards. It\'s one of those super fast coincidences - he could realise I was really into going somewhere and had something to bring to the table, and definitely respected my stuff, and I totally loved his stuff. Still do - he\'s a totally amazing talent man. I really miss not seeing him as much as I used to. Cos he taught me so much. I\'m really indebted to him. He\'s an awesome dude. Yeah man - that\'s my story!

© The Wire 2008