Jamie Lidell: Controlled Collisions
On stage, Jamie Lidell possesses an almost nuclear energy. His fingers dart at the myriad buttons on his MIDI gear. His eyes bulge. He wails. He shouts. He looks — to all appearances — ready to explode. In person, however, he is shy, soft-voiced and just a little awkward.
In short, Lidell embodies a mix of contrasts — expecially when it comes to his musical themes, ideals and inspirations. He counts among his influences the likes of Al Green, Sly Stone, George Clinton and Aphex Twin. He’s a soul singer, beatboxer and experimental electronic music producer. He has worked with electro-alchemist Cristian Vogel and toured with Björk and Beck.
Now, as a solo artist, Lidell has produced a back-to-basics soul album, “Multiply”, and continues to explore the outer reaches of electronic music in live performances across the globe. In nearly all of his endeavours, he wields an impressive arsenal of outboard gear and a PowerBook G4 running Logic Pro and Pro Tools.
Nervous Habit
According to legend, Lidell first sang to keep the bogey monsters at bay. Afraid of the dark, the young Lidell sang into the night to triumph over his fears. The nervous habit honed his voice, transforming him into a sultry soul singer. As he matured and ventured outside of his home town of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, Lidell became enthralled by electronic music. “The techno scene in England was amazing in about ’95 and ’96”, he remembers. “It was a really pioneering time”.
Lidell embraced the pioneering spirit of early technophiles. He began turning his natural musical talent into dance grooves using rudimentary electronic music-making gear. “I had Cubase on an Atari for years”, he says. “Then I realised that I could run the program on my Mac as well. I basically fell in love with that computer and I stayed loyal to the brand. It’s designed for people who want to get stuff done and, back then, it was the only friendly way to use a computer”.
His love for computers and music paid off in the mid-’90s. Lidell sent a demo to a studio in London and was almost immediately invited to record some tracks. “They thought, ‘Maybe this kid’s really good. We’ll just chuck him into the deep end and see what he comes out with’”, Lidell remembers. “I met other producers and party organisers in London — a community. Once I felt my skills were really valued by these people, I was really keen to contribute and see what we could do together”.
Lidell stormed the London rave scene and eventually landed a gig with the Matthew Herbert Big Band project, which toured with Björk. Lidell sang with the impish vocalist at Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl. After the ride was over, he formed the techno-funk outfit Super_Collider with Cristian Vogel. The group released “Head On” in 1999 and “Raw Digits” in 2002.
Lidell released his own album, “Muddlin Gear”, in 2000. Those albums shared a similar quirky electronic sound, heavily influenced by Lidell’s obsession with MIDI and outboard gear. In 2005 that changed. Lidell’s latest project, “Multiply”, is a homage to a funkier era in music, a nod to greats like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Bobby Caldwell.
Simple Multiplication
Super_Collider, as the name suggests, was a highly technical collaboration. Lidell and Vogel cobbled as many musical manipulators together as they could, producing a sound as intriguing as it was infectious. “It was a strange time in technology, a kind of a threshold between the days of MIDI and the days of digital audio”, says Lidell. “On one of the Super_Collider songs we used the Mac’s internal microphone to do the lead vocals. We pushed everything as far as we could. We’d have these explosions of ideas. We even used crazy generative software to come up with the lyrics. Our heads were very much into techno”.
Lidell discarded many of Super_Collider’s techno textures to make “Multiply”. He put his voice, pure and unrestrained, centre stage. “I ended up trying to bring back some kind of simplicity to the music”, he says. “I thought it was time for me to do something new, which actually, bizarrely enough, was to do something older. For me, doing something more traditional is actually more exciting and I learned a lot more than if I had made another electronic record”.
To get that traditional sound, the vocalist travelled the world with his PowerBook, recording jam sessions with other musicians with Logic Pro and Pro Tools. He sought advice, guidance and inspiration from others, fusing their musical sensibilities with his own. “Having a mobile studio is like the ultimate buzz for me”, he says. “A lot of opportunities arise when you’re travelling. And previously it was almost impossible to get good high-fidelity recordings on the road. Now it’s great being able to be so free and flexible”.
Lidell used that flexibility to produce a raw, catchy album that is perhaps the most soulful of his career. “The album should be the sugar on your cornflakes in the morning”, he says.