The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Jamie Lidell’s transformation from glitchy techno boffin into all-out soul sensation ranks as one of the most dramatic and surprising changes of musical direction this decade. Even if you heard his 2005 album Multiply first, then dug back and discovered his debut for Warp, Muddlin Gear, or the two records he produced with Cristian Vogel under the name Super_Collider, you would have been shocked. Sure, there’s a bit of what dance music writers call ‘liquid funk’ about the Super_Collider albums, but you’d have to be on acid to hear anything resembling Prince or Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone in Muddlin Gear. It’s a dense, fractured, Aphex-like record, hardly big on songs or soaring vocals.

Even more shocking was how convincing and instantly excellent Multiply was. Of course he took shit for being some kind of new Jay Kay, but people who cast him off as that were either lazy or thick. Multiply’s execution was almost perfect: it was deeply indebted to the great soul singers of yore but bang up to date - meticulously and superbly produced (by Jamie) and bristling with life. He called it a morning record and a summer record and it sent him around the world, partly as Beck’s touring partner.

If Multiply suggested there was something schizophrenic about Englishman-in-Berlin Lidell, then his live show marked him out as being positively deranged. The songs may have screamed out for a band, but he took to the road alone wrenching his pure soul creations through a homemade electronic super-mincer. He was quite a sight to behold - a wild and intense performer only ever half in control of what he called ‘The Machine’. In fact, so different was his live show to the album, there was even talk of it originally coming out as a CD/DVD package, the DVD being comprised of multi-camera, heavily-edited films of the songs being pulled to pieces and reinvented on stage.

Lidell’s new album, Jim, might have been an unlistenable assault of horrorcore gabba, but turns out to be a very natural successor to Multiply. In fact, it seems like something of a destination. There’s not much programming on Multiply but it does have an electronic edge borne of synths and studio wizardry. Jim is straight-ahead - an unadulterated pop/soul/gospel record (“trad,” Jamie says) that he wrote with his long-time collaborator Mocky in Berlin and recorded in Los Angeles. At its absolute forefront is Jamie’s astonishing voice, which he sought to use, and succeeds in using, as the album’s primary instrument. You really wouldn’t know about his techno heritage listening to Jim. The metamorphosis is 100 per cent complete.

This time around he’s going out on the road with a band for the first time, the very idea of which fills him with terror. Few have managed to pull off the blue-eyed soul thing without looking like what he calls an “acid jazz tit”, so he’s naturally picked his group with care. If their debut performance in London in March was anything to go by, he should be more than fine. They were staggeringly good and Jamie’s not doing it 100 per cent clean. By his side will be a box of gizmos that he’ll be using to tweak and mess with his vocal.

So, who is the real Jamie Lidell? “I’m a question mark, a walking, talking question mark,” he sings on ‘What’s The Use?’ from Multiply, which seems about right. He’s part mad scientist, part Marvin Gaye reincarnated as a dapper dude from Cambridgeshire, part musical anarchist, and part born-to-do-it superstar. “Now there’s a man who needs a little time in therapy,” you may think, but that’s to underestimate him. He’s fiercely intelligent and sure of his mind and, in the end, it’s hard to shake off the simplicity of Jim’s opening lyric: “Another day, another way for me to open up to you.”

Pigeon: So here we are in the PR office of a company that deals with artists as massive as Madonna and REM. Are they attempting to transform you into a global player?
Lidell: [deadpan] Well, my last album sales were around four-and-a-half million, and we’re expecting more with this one, so, yeah, I’ve pretty much reserved half the wall space in here for my picture. Somewhere in-between Elvis and Mick Jagger.

Pigeon: Do you care about becoming a star?
Lidell: Um, I do, I think. I’ve made a record that I want people to hear and, as a side effect, maybe it will sell. That’s not bad; I’ve done a lot of things that haven’t sold… I know how that feels.

Pigeon: Didn’t Multiply sell well?
Lidell: It didn’t do bad. Slow start.

Pigeon: You had a good run with it, though, didn’t you?
Lidell: Yeah, I toured with Beck and ended up in the studio with him. We got along.

Pigeon: What happened to those songs?
Lidell: Stuff for his new record. I was sitting there like Klaus Nomi doing tap dancing and all kinds of mad shit. I was in another Lidell suit. The more mad and fucked up I was, the more he loved it. We were in a studio where you could record straight to vinyl, so we were trying all kinds of things: we made a little no wave band with all the session players he’d brought in and he was playing congas and singing doo-wop backing vocals… he was well up for it. He’s got this kind of attitude of, ‘Let’s just record this shit! Let’s make a 7” right now,’ and he’s laughing like a little kid. He’s a nutter - fully in a mad dream bubble.

Pigeon: Kind of a spiritual brother?
Lidell: It’s helpful for me to have him as a reference point, amongst other things, because people always say, ‘Jamie, you’re a bit of a slippery character,’ and now I can respond, ‘Well, being slippery worked out alright for Beck - it pays to be slippery.’

Pigeon: Were you kicking about with Beck in Los Angeles?
Lidell: Yeah.

Pigeon: That’s where you recorded your new album, Jim, isn’t it?
Lidell: Mocky and I wrote it in Berlin on piano and guitar and that’s what you can hear on the record - people are saying that it sounds trad, classic… With Multiply, the songs that ended up working the best were the ones that were crafted as songs; the ones that we didn’t let slip out the door with bits missing. This time we decided we weren’t going to allow ourselves the luxury of multi-tracking and doing studio shit, although that always makes things kind of cool - the equivalent of doing a photo with a nice camera, good lighting and make-up. You can make anyone look like a fucking movie star. We thought, ‘No frills, keep it honest,’ and that was really good, because by the time we got to LA… I decided we should go to LA to record because I’d met this guy Justin Stanley - Beck band, great guy, Aussie, fucking awesome musician, real character - who said, ‘Ah mate, come over, we’ll have a beer and make some music.’ So I went over to his house and the first night we recorded the song ‘Hurricane’, which ended up on the album. I need characters that can really push me. The songwriting happened fast and so did the recording. Some songs took a while to craft, and you can hear which ones they are - the ones with a bit more lyrical depth and finesse - but mostly we worked quickly.

Pigeon: Did being in LA help?
Lidell: It did. The sun was shining and we were in a kind of vitamin-enriched mood. We were living a crazy new age detox lifestyle while we were there and it was great - a hell of a difference from being in East Berlin. We got the tracking down in two weeks, then went to Paris for three days, then did vocals in Berlin. Couple of overdubs later and it was done. Started in March, finished in June.

Pigeon: Didn’t Multiply take a whole lot longer?
Lidell: It looked like a massive time period but it wasn’t really. I’d made that Super_Collider record in 2002, then I stopped making music in 2003 because I got sick of it… I learnt how to programme computers instead and really enjoyed that; I needed some cerebral activity because it feels like you’re brain is shrinking when you’re making music and on the road the whole time… It gets a bit scary, so I was like, ‘No, sod this, I need to think again.’ Unfortunately… no, not unfortunately, I went really extreme in the other direction. But that’s a whole different story.

Pigeon: You always said Multiply was a morning record and a summer record. Same with Jim?
Lidell: Someone said it’s like the day in the life of someone, which I thought was quite intuitive. It’s like you should play the first track when you wake up, then give yourself an hour and play the next one… It’s a real concept record! Take one track hourly on a daily basis and it might work out for you.

Pigeon: Nice idea, and you’ve got an excellent closer for bedtime with ‘Rope of Sand’.
Lidell: Yeah, I like that one a lot - it gave me a chance to step out of my usual mould. Many of the songs changed from one genre to another while we were making the record. The first track [‘Another Day’] started out really sombre and introverted - a ballad - and then it changed. Exactly the same thing happened with Multiply - the lyrics were depressing and ‘fuck everything’ and the songs were too, but it’s always good to put those kind of messages over with really upbeat tracks. The collision works well.

Pigeon: You played a showcase of the album a couple of days ago. Is that the band you recorded the album with?
Lidell: No, apart from Mocky and he won’t be part of the touring band. The other guys are the touring band, but we’ve got another keyboard player coming in. That gig was our first gig ever - the product of about 20 hours of rehearsal. It wasn’t bad considering, but I’m not a band guy - I’m a solo artist. I was really nervous about suddenly having to have a live band and I didn’t want to have a bunch of ‘we’re in it for the money’ session cats sitting in, playing wank shit and turning me into an acid jazz tit. It’s really hard, man: traditional instruments playing this music - you’re really entering a shit world. If it doesn’t sound right and if it doesn’t have the right intention, you’re fucked. I wanted a bunch of maverick freaks up there and that’s what I’ve got - they all come from the jazz and free jazz world.

Pigeon: Introduce them. Are they all Berlin guys?
Lidell: Yeah, kind of. Taylor Savvy on bass guitar is one of the Canadian crew from back in the day. He’s done stuff with Mocky and he’s part of the family. Amazing songwriter, musical genius actually, and he’s always got some shit up his sleeve. Never calms down. Exactly what I want. The drummer is called Willie B, who’s played with Johnny Dowd, the country guy, for years, so he’s had a lot of experience. He’s really a pro dog - really cool to have around and really solid. And he plays organ pedal so he can play bass and drums at the same time, which he does when Taylor plays guitar. Other musicians: Andre Vida - two saxophones. I wanted a Roland Kirk kind of flavour. Again, saxophones can put you in a dangerous place, so he won’t be playing on every track but the two sax thing sounds really cool. I like harmonised horns and I like mid-range bite. In fact, I want the whole band to have a really biting sound - to double the energy; full fireball. We played on Gilles [Peterson’s radio show] the next day and we were listening back in the studio and it sounded limp - real dickless shit. We knew we had to really amp our shit hard, so the last thing we did was this 30-second segment, jingle kind of thing and we said, ‘Let’s give it everything we’ve got.’ We realised we have to play like that the whole time and we know we can. If we can survive on tour always playing like that, it’s going to be, ‘These guys are fucking insane.’ That’s what I want people to come away with. It can’t be nice. It’s hard, man. I know we need to destroy but at the same time I want the songs to come through. It’s gonna be a real weird time for me - turbulent time.

Pigeon: Exciting time?
Lidell: Pretty exciting. I’ve just got to stay on the right side of things. I want the record to sell, I want it to do well… I’m ready for some of that… I think.

Pigeon: How old are you?
Lidell: Thirty-four.

Pigeon: Where did you grow up?
Lidell: Kind of round Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

Pigeon: I’m guessing you were a real raver when you were younger.
Lidell: Oh yeah.

Pigeon: Pills, largin’ it, everything?
Lidell: Oh yeah.

Pigeon: In the UK, or when you moved to Berlin?
Lidell: In the UK - when I was 16 till, basically, 1999.

Pigeon: Choice of musical poison?
Lidell: Techno! More the Detroit stuff - good techno. I listened to shit techno in the beginning, and hardcore - straight up hardcore, like everyone was into. Going out and… [sighs].

Pigeon: In London?
Lidell: I went to Bristol first - college in Bristol - then I moved to Brighton.

Pigeon: Why did you move to Berlin?
Lidell: I had a girlfriend there at the time and I wanted to leave Brighton - it was pissing me off. I was making crazy music at the time: I’d just made that album Muddlin Gear and I was fully into mental electronics and I was into going to clubs that were playing extreme shit. Brighton was rubbish for that: everyone was into Fat Boy Slim and Carl Cox and that kind of crap: get pissed, get a bird, have a fight. I badly needed to leave and get some cerebral activity. Berlin is amazing for that - the average intelligence on a street level is frighteningly high. You come back to England and you’re appalled - in Brighton especially. No offence to Brighton, but you know what I mean. It’s a seaside town - hedonistic - but I needed to replace that kind of hedonism with another kind, which I found in Berlin. It’s just as hedonistic but it’s different. People really get electronic music there - it’s no big deal. People understand it and I felt like I’d landed. So that’s why I went trad, ha ha ha!

Pigeon: Did you suddenly discover soul music or is it something that’s been with you all your life?
Lidell: I think you either get it or you don’t and I was the kid at school listening to Prince, Sly Stone, Funkadelic, James Brown… I wanted stuff with a crazy beat. It used to drive me mad. Most kids were into The Cure, Smiths, The Mission, Fields of the Nephilim, shoegazy bands like My Bloody Valentine - cool indie bands. I checked it all out, and then everyone kind of met in the middle when Primal Scream came out with Screamadelica. Great record, because it helped indie kids and ravers see eye-to-eye. That was a cool time to be around making stuff. It inspired me a lot, that record. It put the Stones and British soul into a kind of rave context. Big record for everyone. Other things were in the air then too - it was a kind of push-pull thing. But I always wondered how some people could not like James Brown. You see him on stage in, like, ’71 and he’s superhuman - incredible. I liked Prince first because my older sister was into him. Then I wanted to know what he was influenced by and that’s when my obsession with that kind of music began to grow - the puzzle of music started to come together for me. But I didn’t get into Marvin Gaye until I was 17/18 and then I was like, ‘Oh shit, this guy is insane.’

Pigeon: Were you singing when you were a teenager?
Lidell: Yeah, yeah.

Pigeon: Why then, for so long, did you not use your voice on your records?
Lidell: I was in bands all that time, but I just didn’t release any of that music. I don’t know why - probably because we weren’t together enough. It was easier to make a little techno record, print up 500 copies, and that’s where I was at until I did Muddlin Gear and Warp signed it. Everything before then was ‘do it, press it, slap a sticker on it, see what happens’ - kind of like a hobby. Actually, the first thing that happened was I got signed to Loaded with Cristian [Vogel], then the Warp thing happened.

Pigeon: What did Warp think when you took Multiply to them? Were they surprised?
Lidell: More bemused. Didn’t like it. Steve [Beckett, Warp boss] didn’t really not like it, he was more, ‘It’s too straight, Jamie, what you doing?’ I was like, ‘You’re a fucking idiot, what you doing? I’ve given you an album that you might actually be able to sell and I’ve tried my best to focus my talents.’ I thought it was really me, but in a very approachable form. I wasn’t just throwing out noise, which I can do any day of the fucking week. I’ve done that and I still do that in my live show and I may do that again on an album, but I learned then what I really like about the records I listen to - that they’re different to live shows and don’t often overlap. And I think most people would rather be in the studio, unless they’re a certain kind of artist. So, yeah, I gave them Multiply and they were confused. I think they almost shelved it.

Pigeon: Did they not think that a lot of people would hear it and instantly love it, as many people did?
Lidell: I think that maybe at the back of their minds they were hoping that would happen, but, um, you have to get into their minds to understand why they were so confused by it. In terms of advertising and all that, they didn’t know where to put it - they were still approaching The Wire and things like that. I like The Wire, don’t get me wrong… I even got on the front, but they didn’t do that because of the album. They heard the album and probably thought, ‘See you later,’ but they liked my live show. Document him now before he turns into a pop sensation! I toured like crazy after Multiply came out and it worked. I ended up doing the leg work, basically.

Pigeon: Were you worried about how the record would be perceived by the public? You once said something like, no one would care if a black guy did an opera, but a white guy doing soul was still a no-no.
Lidell: Well, you’d hope that no one would care. Some people would make a fuss maybe. But I’m definitely aware that I’m like multiple fictions - multiple personalities. I’m pretty schizophrenic - into all kinds of shit.

Pigeon: Is it an identity crisis or just different facets of your personality?
Lidell: [pause] I think it’s just different facets. It’s definitely something that I’m obsessed by. But I sung along to that music - it’s my soundtrack; what I would sing in the shower, if you like. That’s what I learned. If you’re a guitarist, maybe you learn to play along to music from the Congo and then that’s what you end up playing - it’s your teacher. Growing up in small-town England, I didn’t have any ways of learning music other than playing records. Prince was my teacher, effectively. I’d sit there with a drum machine and work out how he was doing songs. I’d play along with him and think, ‘Shit, that’s amazing!’ It was such a pleasure. You gotta do it - you gotta study. If someone’s playing some blues and they say, ‘Hey son, jump in,’ you can’t expect to be able to. You’ve got to know your history and you’ve got to love it. Are you going to invent a musical genre all of a sudden? But I know it comes naturally to me and I feel it and when I do feel it I know I’m fully there.

Pigeon: And, ultimately, that’s all that matters?
Lidell: Basically, yes - my music is not affected somehow, even though for some people it must be because I’m an English guy, therefore it can’t be me. But there are so many things that shouldn’t be me. I don’t really know who it is that I’m supposed to be or allowed to be. I don’t like this idea of only being allowed to that; I don’t like that conclusion. I don’t have any kids, but if I did I wouldn’t say to them, ‘Your destiny is this and you’re not allowed to be that.’

Pigeon: Does this tie into why the record is called ‘Jim’? First of all, is that what your friends call you?
Lidell: Yeah, a few people.

Pigeon: So you’re saying, ‘This is me and screw you if you don’t think so.’
Lidell: It’s a part of me. That’s the thing - it’s not all of me; it’s like a very friendly, approachable me. There are a lot of darker parts of me that people know from the shows. I go a little bit mental. It’s like Jack Nicholson in The Shining or something; one of my multiple fictions. And I embrace all of them these days. I let them all in. Fuck it, I think that’s it: everyone’s putting on a show - every fucker - and I’ve come to terms with that. Look at all these guys on the cover of Q in here - it’s a pose and it’s fun for those guys, I hope. I’m really into it too. I like the pop world for now - it’s funny.

Pigeon: Assume this record is a massive hit. Would it then be in your nature to go and do something completely different - some really nasty, glitchy techno or something - just to piss people off? Or would you want to maintain your pop stardom?
Lidell: I don’t know, I can’t predict it. I thought I might be sick of it by the end of Multiply, but I wasn’t. I got in the studio and I was like, ‘I’ve still got a load of stuff I want to do.’ So, I don’t know. I’m not really that good at predicting the future.

Pigeon: Not a bad thing being slippery, like you said, and keeping your fans guessing.
Lidell: When I saw Gilles yesterday, he said: ‘When I first heard the record, I was disappointed.’ Okay. ‘But when I put it on in my car the next day, I fucking got it so hard. I really noticed what it was about; that you’d really done something else.’ That’s good. I met Rick Rubin during the course of making this record, after it was done. He wanted to sign it to Columbia - he was checking me out. I went round his house in Malibu. Super surreal experience. I was fully hungover from the night before because I think I was nervous about meeting him, so I was drinking. He asked me what kind of music I liked and I said, ‘I dunno, Madlib, Sun Ra…’ He was like, ‘What!? That’s cool, I love that shit too.’ I was like, ‘Well, I guess it doesn’t come through that much on the record,’ and he asks me whether I’d heard the D’Angelo album.

Pigeon: So he immediately thought of you as some kind of neo soul artist?
Lidell: But at the same time, it’s good that record - I checked it out - except you can’t hear what he’s singing because of the stacks of vocal. Anyway, Rick Rubin, the first thing he said to me was, ‘You’ve made a really great record,’ and I was like, ‘Fucking hell, Rick Rubin saying that - I must have done something.’ It’s kind of mad. In fact, it’s insane: I fucking produced this record and wrote it and it’s really my bag somehow. It’s not like I had some outside figure like Mark Ronson guiding the ship. I feel really proud of that. Me and Mocky working together. And Rick Rubin rates us. Amazing feeling.

More content of interest...

• Leaders (Posted in 016 May 2008 | Comment & Analysis)