Jamie Lidell: Controlled Collisions
Live Lunacy
To the uninitiated, a Lidell performance could be confused with the ravings of a lunatic. Surrounded by blinking electronic equipment, he sports flashy and nonsensical clothing and is regularly consumed by convulsions. He creates a symphony of instruments using his own voice — he records riffs, licks, moans, clicks, and even kisses into samplers and his PowerBook. He fuses the samples together in a creative paroxysm that he unleashes to the crowd, demonstrating that the line that separates lunacy from genius is a thin one.
“It’s a blank canvas,” he says. “When I start a show, there’s no sound at all. I have to create everything from scratch. I make the sounds, using my voice, mostly. The computer is just a good listener, a multitrack looping system. I make up to five recordings, which I can play back simultaneously. I control everything using MIDI interface — recording, muting, playing, and deleting sounds. I roll with it as long as I think it’s interesting, then I start a new song.”
The result is a spasmodic synergy of soul vocals, beatboxed drum loops, and synth choruses. Lidell famously abhors concerts that are little more than loud replays of album material.
During his shows, the musician constantly creates, sometimes performing songs not found on any of his albums. No two performances are alike.
Lidell concerts are as visually arresting as they are sonically stunning. Director and effects specialist Pablo Fiacso summons dazzling visuals using live digital feeds, photographic stills, multi-colored lights, and stock footage from Lidell’s videos. He manipulates these swirling creations during the shows, cutting in live footage from handheld DV cams and even a camera mounted to a large army-green helmet that encapsulates Lidell’s head. Lidell performs in the midst of this chaos, fed by the creative energy.
Balancing Act
Lidell can’t escape his chaotic creative energy. “I’m liable to make all kinds of music,” he says. “I’m relatively unfocused. So I basically don’t know how things will turn out. At the moment, I’m going through a cool process because I’m opening my mind completely.”
Still, he wouldn’t mind cranking out a few more soul records to appease his growing fan base. “Of course, with the success of ’Multiply,’ there’s temptation to follow through and elaborate on that style,” he says. “I really enjoy that idea, but we’ll wait and see. I’m just gonna try and sketch as many songs as possible and I’ll see what the dominant style is and I’ll put it out.”
That approach to making an album may seem haphazard to some, but Lidell lives for those creative moments when the music simply flows — without being guided by the forces of pop charts or record executives. “I don’t particularly like the idea of marketing an album,” he says. “Music is constantly coming to me. I like the idea of making music and just releasing it as it’s made.”
But even creative purists realize that their art can’t exist in a vacuum. They need to consider their fans, those who appreciate music, those who understand. “It does allow you to focus your ideas,” says Lidell. “I ask: ‘Is this communicating anything that anyone else would care about?’ And if it is, that’s a nice feeling — you can reach out and get to people with something that meant something to you. I know it sounds pretty cheesy, but it’s true.”
