Jamie xx: 'I'm so ready to be out there and playing again'

When it comes to fine-tuning a dance track, nothing beats real-time feedback from a live audience says electronic musician Jamie xx.

"As a DJ you get to stand there and really engage with how a song works. A lot of it has to do with the structure and where the bass and the kick sit and how they hit and how they feel on a massive sound system," he told RNZ's Music 101.

As he completed his new solo record In Waves, xx says he was excited to finally share the finished songs.

"If I'm still in love with that piece of music I can get such an instant visceral reaction from the crowd."

This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions.

Jamie xx (aka James Smith) has made three albums with indie band The xx and released his Grammy Award-winning solo debut In Colour in 2015.

On the follow-up In Waves, he enlists an electric guest line-up including xx bandmates Oliver Sim and Romy Madley, Australian electronic group The Avalanches, American soul singer Erykah Badu and Swedish pop singer Robyn.

Jamie xx says he knew Robyn would know exactly what to do when he sent her the track 'Life'.

"She nailed it like the first take pretty much and sent it back and then we discussed it a little bit. I was thinking what she was thinking. It was perfectly aligned."

It's "quite an intense, sometimes awkward process" working with someone else in a very quiet studio, xx says.

"At the end of it, I go and make music on my own and sort of be reinvigorated in that way."

xx was inspired to upgrade his basement music studio in London to one with an "inspiring" view after spending time in coastal New Zealand.

His SoHo studio is home to a lot of vintage music gear and a large collection of records, many of which are soul, jazz and folk.

Although he often avoids listening to contemporary music for fear it might be too directly influential, xx always has an ear out for fresh sounds from the past.

"I'm always on the hunt for things that people won't recognise, necessarily, that I can maybe flip and make something that's catchy and hopefully can introduce people to that artist that may not have been very popular in their time."

A sample of American poet Nikki Giovanni reading her 1976 work 'The Dance Poem' features on the In Waves track 'All You Children', a collaboration with The Avalanches.

xx says he filed the Giovanni audio away for future use after picking up her spoken-word children's album The Reason I Like Chocolate at a Washington DC record store a decade ago.

"I've got an endless library in my head - very disorganised - of samples that I want to use."

Although the "endless possibilities" of AI-assisted music are really interesting to xx, he prefers to use the technology only for processing sounds and samples.

"I find that that is not very helpful in terms of being creative… I need limitations. I need some walls up to be able to sort of hone in on something simple that will connect rather than every single possibility being available."

While you can "lose your mind a bit" alone in a studio for days, xx says, too much touring isn't good for mental health, either.

Before the Covid-19 lockdowns, xx was feeling "disconnected from real life"after too much time on the road.

"I had a chance to stop and just sort of think about what I've been up to for the last however many years of my life, just take it all in, and also learn how to look after myself instead of being looked after by a tour manager or being in a different city every day.

"I just needed that grounding to be able to get back in the studio and make music like I used to when I was a kid, just for the fun of it.

"As soon as I started doing that, things started to fit together. And I wasn't thinking about trying to finish an album. I was just thinking about what I was going to do that day and how much fun I was going to have."

Post-pandemic, there was a great atmosphere in London, he says.

"Everyone was just really excited to be together, You could literally just get a bike and cycle down on the canal near where I live or into the forest and people brought sound systems and decks. We were just so excited to be dancing together again.'

xx feels lucky that he gets to play both massive stages and tiny clubs but it's smaller venues that are his favourite.

"You're so engaged with the crowd, you can see everybody's faces and by the end of like a three-hour set, you feel a connection with the audience."

As he plays live shows around the world this year, xx has been on his longest-ever break from the music studio. He says the new focus on doing just one thing at a time is paying off.

"It has actually been great for my head. I'm ready to get back into it but it's nice to just focus on the life stuff a bit."