How Jamie xx cured his FOMO

You’d barely know it talking to him. Real name Jamie Smith, the UK DJ, producer and beats-savvy mechanism within The xx rolls in the lowest of low keys.

But then you listen to his club mixes and — now — his ebullient debut album In Colour and you get it.

“We’re colourful people with a real lust for life,” he says quietly, speaking about himself and his joined-at-the-hip band mates in The xx Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft.

“I want my music to be not so serious. That’s why I called the album In Colour. We’re all looked on as dark and moody and mono-chromatic and I feel like we’re not that at all,” he corrects. It’s not obvious until you look closer and notice he has a track called Obvs. And a feeelthy/funnnnny guest rap from Young Thug and Popcaan on I Know There’s Gonna Be Good Times that just scored Best New Track on Pitchfork in a pink fit.

The xx are two albums into a carefully planned, meticulously executed career, both modern classics. Their self-titled debut scooped The Mercury Prize in 2010 and the 2012 follow-up Coexist solidified their status as a singular electronic outfit adept at mournful, warm music that envelopes you until it feels like The xx are “your” band. On the side, Jamie xx has become a remixer in demand and *one of the world’s finest DJs. He made an album We’re New Here using Gil Scott Heron’s I’m New Here album and was then asked to work with Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Drake. All the while he had a solo album on simmer.

Something wasn’t quite gelling with it though. “It never felt like it was done,” he says gruffly.

It wasn’t until Jamie xx got homesick and sick on tour (“As I get older I’m going to have to come up with some sort of strategy, not just go hard until I get ill…because at the moment that’s what I do.”) and ended up in a YouTube wormhole that he found his muse. Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore is a 15 minute mini-film splicing UK rave footage from the late ‘80s and ‘90s and nerdy scout dances with MCs toasting and revving up the crowd. Jamie xx used some samples on his nostalgic All Under One Roof Raving track. It was a neat fit.

“It’s just fun for me, listening to archives of UK rave and the history, especially when I’m on tour, I get right into it. I constantly do it, even now. There were bits that sound like riffs to me, they had a rhythm I wanted to use,” he says.

He was onto something. On Gosh, the song that opens In Colour, he uses an enthusiastic, growling MC’s chant: “Oh my gosh, easy easy, hold it down, hold it down, yes UK massive YES UK MASSSSIVVVVE” as the track transmogrifies from a grey cloud into cerulean blue skies. It sets a life-affirming tone to In Colour.

Is he being patriotic? “Not patriotic. It’s like patriotism gives it a political aspect which I don’t have.”

When pressed on the ‘Fiorucci samples he reveals “I’ve been taking a recorder with me when I go out to clubs and recording what people are saying outside in the smoking area. It’s always fun to listen to the morning after. People chatting sh– and being super-excited. Very entertaining when you’re sober.”

No clearance forms, no worries. If you’ve been at a recent Jamie xx gig your gurning gabbing may appear on a future track, no danger mate.

The rakish 25-year-old’s go-to instrument features on In Colour too: the steel drum.

“I always liked the sound but I could never find much music that I loved with the steel pan in it…until I bought one,” he says. “Then I started digging a little deeper, I found some disco tracks with steel pan, those tracks had that tropical feeling but also that sadness to it.”

The steel pan’s sensual clang needs to be used sparingly though.

“It’s a hard thing to harness and not let it overpower you so it becomes a kind of a gimmick. I do get sick of it,” he admits. Did he get prenups? “Aha, no,” he laughs quietly. “I always like to make something quickly with the steel pan. My main aim is to not spend hours and hours twiddling knobs. I want music to connect with people as easily as possible. Making music is the thing that makes me happiest in the world, when I’m doing it.”

Another sound he’s found of could be described as a steam train whistle with its teeth punched out? It gives Sleep Sound and Just Saying a hefty flourish.

“It’s a vocoder with a sample run through it and white noise run through it. It sounds like a puff of air,” Jamie says. Like the steel pan, he didn’t want to use it too much lest it takes away the impact. “Exactly. Burial has two incredible albums, perfect from beginning to end and they don’t get boring and stay within their certain sounds.”

Loud Places featuring Romy is a frontrunner for single of the year, a six minute sojourn from home to the club just to find someone to get far from the madding crowd.

“We had this song, the start of Loud Places and I had all these different versions of it, instrumentals, I had an orchestral version but it was way too cinematic and overemotional and just a bit silly,” he says.

“And we never quite got it right and I was about to ditch it…I had one last attempt at turning it into something and that was adding the Idris Muhammad sample,” he says of using the wafting vocals from the underground ‘70s disco record Could Heaven Ever Be Like This. “I didn’t think it was gonna work but when it did it was the ‘Eureka’ moment.”

As for the honeydew melon guitar, “That’s the Tracy In My Room sample. The Everything But The Girl remix by Soul Vision, it’s a nod to that track, it was always a track that I loved, Romy comes up with quite a few riffs that sound like it but Loud Places was the track to use it on.”

Anatomy of a Song:

TITLE: Tracy In My Room – Everything But The Girl Vs Soul Vision

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CAPTION: Tracy In My Room – Everything But The Girl Vs Soul Vision

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REVIEW

IN COLOUR

JAMIE XX

(Young Turks/Remote Control)

4.5 stars

Dedicated clubbers have to make the decision every weekend: “Am I ravin’ or behavin’?” Jamie xx has been keeping it nice over two records by The xx while becoming one of … strike that … *THE smartest DJ in the world.

Now it’s time for the party.

He’s a composer in two senses: he writes filmic scores for future dancefloors and he sounds so damn composed all the time. Total control.

Opening with proper rave-up Gosh for the “UK Massive” a synth rises like a terrible truth guided by a navy blue strobe.

Jamie was too young to experience Britain’s halcyon days in the early ’90s but via In Colour he has cured his FOMO by making a record that throws one sweaty fist into the air while using the other hand to give a massage in the chill-out room.

A barbershop on mogadon croon their way through Sleep Sound, singing for their supper and conjuring images of Mickey Mouse in Fantasia mixing 2-step and bluegrass in his cauldron, then throwing Dapper Dan in the mix to “tszuj” up your hair.

Hold Tight is a regional gangster, speeding from Birmingham to Bristol, a nightcrawler glancing like Jake Gyllenhaal’s recent Nosferatu.

You can whiff the Brixton skunk on Obvs; Jamie xx lets his beloved steel pan pitter patter over a loping beat that morphs into a dubby cruiser. It’s the best dressed chicken in town.

Just Saying winds up on a steam train’s whistle, huffing with its teeth punched out.

Loud Places is an enema for your ears; a royal flush. Good Times’ Negro spirituals give way to stroller sex lyrics, Jamie is a cheeky chappy at heart.

It’d be a perfect 5 if he’d included his hit All Under One Roof Raving. The omission fits — it’s that unquenchable desire for “just one more boogie”. / MIKEY CAHILL

SOUNDS LIKE: Arpeggio for strings (gives you wings).

IN A WORD: crepuscular.

In Colour (XL/Remote Control) out now.

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