On Taking Time Alone, 20 Hours In The Studio And Living In Brooklyn

When asked how he is, Jamie xx (aka Jamie Smith) replies “not bad”. He’s just returned to London from Coachella, which he describes as “very fun”, but Smith’s gentle, monotone delivery is at odds with this description. “It’s a beautiful place and I spent some time out in the desert on my own, which was wicked,” he continues, once again sounding unenthused, exhausted or potentially both. “I rented a house in Joshua Tree for the week in between the two Coachellas.” Did he have any interesting, enlightening visions? He laughs knowingly, before offering, “Um, I had a lot of time to think.” Smith says that he doesn’t meditate, but has “given it a go”. On whether he constantly has thoughts running through his head, Smith admits, “Yes, definitely.” You get the feeling that the majority of these thoughts are music-related and with the crazy regularity of Smith’s output – his band The xx, solo guise, remixes, production work as well as DJ sets – downtime must be rare.

“I always take a field recorder out with me when I tour,” Smith enlightens, “and a lot of the sounds [on In Colour] are based on sort of chatter from nights out and that sort of thing.” Album opener Gosh is a startling statement with spleen-rupturing bass rumbles and samples from a bunch of different pirate radio shows repeating phrases such as, “Oh, my gosh”. “I liked that phrase,” Smith allows. “It’s quite an old English phrase, ‘Oh, my gosh’. It’s been sort of recoined by jungle MCs from the mid-‘90s so I just like how those sorts of things are constantly reappropriated in the UK.”

“It’s quite an old English phrase, ‘Oh, my gosh’. It’s been sort of recoined by jungle MCs from the mid-‘90s"

All Under One Roof Raving from Smith’s debut solo outing, features spoken-word samples, some of which were lifted from Mark Leckey’s 1999 short film Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore. Watching this video-art piece calls to mind long lost nights out on the town spent entirely on the dancefloor, when chats are minimal and it’s all about the tunes. Reflecting on such nights out, Smith muses, “I definitely feel like, just being older, it happens less for me.”

Another standout album track, Girl, samples Freeez’s IOU. When asked whether he recalls the first time he heard the ‘80s classic, Smith offers, “Somebody at the record label played it, ‘cause the original Freeez record was actually out on the same group of record labels [Beggars Group] that we release on, and I’d never heard it before. And somebody played it in the office, somebody who’s been working with us since day one, and I just loved it, basically, and the fact that it’s British and it’s sort of related to our history a little bit.”

While working on music, Smith says he can completely lose track of time “when it’s going well” and estimates the longest period of time he’s spent working in the studio would be “20 hours”. “I have big windows in the studio so I can sort of tell what time it is,” Smith points out, “but that’s definitely a benefit, something I need, when I get into that mode because otherwise I would end up feeling crazy.”

So how does Smith know when a work is complete? “I mean, I could carry on tweaking my album still, but I don’t think it would be very beneficial for me or for the album,” he opines. Another opinion can also prove helpful when determining whether or not a record is fully baked, he finds. “Even sitting in a room with somebody while they listen to your record, somebody who you respect or you value their opinion, helps you gauge – like, what you’re thinking at the time that they’re listening. It really helps you tell whether you really think something’s finished, or if there’s still bits that sound unfinished that you wouldn’t have noticed without anyone else in the room.” 

"It can be very lonely, which I liked, but it can also be exhaustingly social"

Smith recently spent a couple of months living in Brooklyn and shares, “I really liked living there for a little while. It can be very lonely, which I liked, but it can also be exhaustingly social, which is also fun. It just sort of depends who’s in town, really. It’s very much a place where, for me at least, depending on whoever’s there at the time it really changes what happens in the city.” His intention was always to do a lot of songwriting while in New York. “I had a little studio set up in The Armory where [The xx] were doing these shows,” he contributes. “So I would go in and start working from, like, 11am until the end of the day in between doing shows.” On whether he works well with deadlines, Smith confesses, “I definitely need deadlines, but I always miss them.”

Although Smith acknowledges he mostly digests music through headphones these days, he adds, “It’s not a good way of mixing records, though, ‘cause things sound very weird on speakers when you make music for headphones. It usually works out if you make music to be listened to on speakers; it sounds good through the headphones, but not the other way around.”