Cliche Can't Be Tamed

In Waves dares you to dance. It oozes PMA and at the same time makes you question where Jamie xx’s head was while he made these tracks. What does it mean to be inspired? What experiences move us to create and from what place? Bottling up happiness is seemingly much harder than showing our scars. For Jamie xx, duality is key and as he enters this next chapter in his career, he finds himself begging the question, what happens when you don’t have to choose?

Lindsey Okubo— You played a killer show for the opening of The Floor in Brooklyn in July! Naturally you started the residency in your home of London but since bringing it to other cities, New York being your first next stop, I can only imagine how it must feel to actualize your dream of having your own space, your own club. 

Jamie xx— I mean, it's been amazing, it’s been better than I dreamed of. I guess I was a little naive before it was all happening about what it means to have your own space and play there every night but being able to meet all these younger DJs that are killing it along with the older legends, some people I know, some people I don’t — it’s all been very inspiring, but it's also been very exhausting. 

I can only imagine! That being said, the state of being inspired for an artist often ebbs and flows, even if they’re still making work, and I’m wondering how you keep that sense of inspiration alive and how it’s changed? We don’t realize how rare those moments are and cultivating them becomes more of an outlook than anything. 

You always have to put yourself out of your comfort zone, really, at least that's what I find. I'm very happy making music on my own and being in my studio alone and that gets me to a certain point, but I always have to push myself and push the limits of what I'm comfortable with. Every time I think something's finished, I always have it in my head that it could be better, which is not the most satisfying way to live but I think it's also the best way to make good art. 

In the past when you were making music with The xx, people used words like “brooding” to describe the music. Creating from a place of pain or sadness is often said to be easiest because you’ve already been pushed to the edge and ironically or not, it’s sometimes harder to be inspired by joy and to capture that feeling – but dance music seemingly does that. The new album radiates such positive energy, is it reflective of your lived experiences as of late? 

I mean, I try not to overthink it. When I'm making music, the best stuff comes out when I'm in a very free space mentally. I'm letting mistakes happen, doing whatever's going on and just being in a bit of a flow state. Whenever I've thought too much about the music that I'm making or gonna make, it doesn't end up being very interesting. There's a certain emotion or feeling that I get when I am making something that I love and I think that translates into the music and vice versa. I find it very hard to put my finger on it but I think that's part of the joy of it as well. It's the searching for those moments that then become the piece of music in the end.

Your music has always been quite abstract and as a result, it resonates on a bit more of an emotional level which makes me think of what you’re saying about being in a flow state, having that sense of freedom. In words, what does it feel like? 

It just feels like time slows down while simultaneously going extremely quickly, I lose days in that state. Sometimes it's great and you feel very happy at the end of the day and others you've made something that sounds insane because you've been in this wormhole of being creative and are unable to zoom out. Either way, it's amazing to be able to just do that and sit for a day, to make music and be creative and follow these weird trains of thought.  

Absolutely and between now and 2015 when the last album came out, inevitably so much has happened, changed. For you I can imagine that maturing has meant finding your own voice? The music seems more assured and in the past you’ve said you weren’t keen on playing your own stuff on stage but that feels different? Can you speak to the in-between, then and now?

Just like anyone going from being 25 to being 35, you have massive changes or growth. You become more confident in yourself, you know what you like and what you don't and how to live your life in a way that is sustainable for you. So for me, all those things bled into being able to make music and in a more balanced way and better way and I guess that seeped into the album.

It's interesting when you say the word sustainable. I’ve been mulling the word over a lot recently and feel like it’s really the key to having a long and fulfilling career. These ideas of success and fulfillment as they pertain to our careers are actually very different and I’m wondering what sustainability means for you creatively and as an artist? 

Well, I think one of the things I've realized over the last 10 years is that I'm so grateful to be able to do this; and to be able to be at this level where I can play really big shows, people know my music and I get to travel around the world but I can also play really small shows like The Floor, and connect with people in that way. I can also just walk around the street and nobody knows who I am and have perfectly normal time. I'm not really striving for anything bigger than that. I just hope that I get to keep doing what I'm doing in a similar way for as long as possible, as long as people want to hear it. I'm just very happy with where I am.

Right, that duality is important so you don’t feel stuck in one mode of operating. That being said, I know everyone's been talking about The xx getting back together, an event that kind of lends its hand to that same idea. You’ve all been able to preserve your relationships and make your own paths. The idea of “going back” to something comes with a lot of yearning but very rarely are we truly able to, what’s the emotional toll of that? 

It was about all of us going out, doing our own thing so we could make something new and fresh. By being able to bring in new ideas after having put ourselves in different scenarios, the next album can be better and we can enjoy it more because it's more of a challenge. It’s tricky because when we come back together, we are further apart as human beings as well as musically and it's going to take more to make music that we all love again together. I've really enjoyed just hanging out with them again and jamming. We've made lots of things, some better than others and we all are in quite different headspaces about the music that we're making but I think that was the point of it and we're just at the beginning. 

When you say, making it “better,” how are you guys personally defining that? To what extent does the music have to reflect growth or the experiences that you now have under your belt?

It's really hard to say because we haven't really even properly begun the hard work of making an album. For me, it means a better process of working, better living. I've been surprised by how much I'm enjoying the back and forth of working with them and how unprecious I am about anything. I'm very excited that any music that we make could be for the band at the moment and it can sound like anything. They may not necessarily feel the same way, but at least that's my idea of it at the moment.

Right and the bit about being unprecious, that must feel good. The world is such a different place today from when you guys started out in the early aughts and I feel like with social media, this idea of putting anything out there can feel so contrived at times or subconsciously inhibited by self-censorship. 

Yeah I think having done this for a long time, it's just really nice to not feel like that all the time but I'm sure it will come in moments, you can't get away from that. If you want something to be good, you have to have those moments but I'm very glad that I get to sort of zoom out now and see how nice it can be and look forward to getting into the nitty gritty of the process. 

When you say being able to zoom out, do you feel like that's kind of just something that perspective essentially comes with time or how do you think you got to that point? Because the world of dance music has really changed, we’ve seen DJs reach a new level of pop stardom and cliche and going out is about escaping, hedonism, lack of accountability. Yet, with your music and The Floor, you’re striving for a sense of presence. On the “breather” track, you’ve got some meditative voiceovers and it’s interesting to ask that of the audience. 

Yeah, I think it's exactly that. It’s definitely changed over the years and some of the stuff that I struggled with over the making of this album was related to how it's changed. Thinking about what influence my first solo album had on dance music to where the scene is at now makes me realize how scenes grow differently than how they used to when I was a kid. In the end, I just had to sort of put blinders on and do exactly what I wanted to do, regardless of everything else because it was really messing with my head. The Floor is the antithesis to the giant stadium shows with everyone with their phones out. It's a small 300 capacity room. It's too dark for you to want to have your phone out and that's my favorite kind of thing to go to. I also try not to be too negative about it and there's a lot of people who connect with the music that I connect with now. Some of the more emotionally driven dance music nowadays feels a bit forced to me, as if it's not really coming from the heart but I also think there's enough space in the world for everybody to make and play whatever they want to. 

Totally and thinking about cities as scenes, how was the energy in New York versus in London? 

The energy was amazing. Even from night to night, the energy was totally different every night in both London and in New York. I love that about spaces, they transform every night.

It reminds me of something you said in a past interview – that dance music has the potential to be more radical than anything else – it’s unfixed. Hearing that now, where’s your head at?

It comes down to a basic instinct, not to get too serious or earnest about it, but humans have always been communicating through dance, there was always a need for it. Before an abundance of dance floors, it was a church and before that, people were banging wooden sticks in caves and dancing around to that. It’s how we've excised our demons since before we could speak in that way, it's always going to be around, you can do anything with it, it has endless possibilities because of that. 

Endless possibilities meaning an infinite number of ways to find connection? You’ve used that word “connection” quite a bit, when do you feel most connected?

I felt that on Thursday night when Francois was playing in New York. I just had an hours long chat with him before his set and we were talking about similar things to what we've been talking about – the state of dance music, the different ways in which it goes and how he's experienced that since the start of his career, which was a lot longer than mine, and we have very similar feelings about all of that. Going to the dance floor to then watch him play and to see the room come together and be uplifted by his set, it was just a beautiful thing. It was very invigorating and super inspiring. I felt that connection more than I had on the other nights, even though the other nights were amazing, there was testament to the fact that you can get that good by doing it for that long and he’s done it for 50ish years. 

That’s sustainability right there. I don't know if you struggle with this at all but I think there’s something to balancing how you perceive yourself, as an individual and/or as an artist. How far away are those terms in degrees of separation, if at all? 

I think I'm constantly trying to figure it out. I'm trying to be as grounded as possible and I think that the answer to being like that is to not really think of yourself as an artist or it being any different from having any other job. Over the last few years, I've enjoyed treating it like a job, going into the studio no matter what, even if it wasn't working, trying to do a nine to five while giving myself the freedom to stay up for two days, if it's going well. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but there are very few other professions where you get to have that workflow and it’s not to be taken for granted. I definitely don't walk around thinking of myself as an artist the whole time. 

That’s interesting, you’re kind of chasing that flow state, feeling that connection while having to come back down and live in the sometimes mundane reality of things. That being said, music has kind of taken you around the globe throughout your youth and into your adult years, but I feel like home is something that also seems to be very important to you. What does home mean to you?

I think it's just the simple things it represents like having a routine, getting to see my favorite people, going to my favorite park – the things you start to take for granted. If I'm in one place for too long, I used to get restless but I'm really starting to cherish all of these little things again. It's all the stuff outside of music, really, that home represents and I think my perspective on it has changed slightly. I used to miss home a lot, I used to make music based on that feeling and now I think music is this totally international thing. I love traveling for music, getting to be in all these places and see the world and healers of new music and home is kind of a sanctuary away from that.