Jamie xx is on the hunt for records. When we speak, he’s on a North American tour, getting behind the decks every night and DJing a variation on his set with records he’s found in each city. He likes the challenge. As he reflects on the success of his latest album, last year’s In Waves, Jamie xx is simply “enjoying the job and staying inspired”.

As Jamie xx, Jamie Smith, 36, has become one of the defining DJs, record producers and musicians of his generation. The south London born and raised artist’s sound shot into the stratosphere when he was 20 as part of the indie-pop group The xx, which he formed alongside school friends Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, whose delicate vocals dance over Smith’s production. They released their Mercury Prize-winning, double-platinum debut album, xx, in 2009, solidifying their turn-of-the-decade defining sound: a daring, haunting, atmospheric and intimate collection of songs that expertly flowed and intertwined into a perfectly concise body of work. In his teens, Smith was inspired by the dubstep and garage tracks he heard on the radio growing up in the 2000s. These influences, infused with R&B, created The xx’s fresh sound and popularised a minimalist-pop movement. Smith’s critically acclaimed creations were sampled by Rihanna, led to production work with Drake and Alicia Keys, and scored him remixes with Radiohead, Adele and Florence + the Machine. But it’s his solo albums – In Colour (2015), which received a nomination for Best Dance/Electronic album at the Grammy Awards, and In Waves – that have established him as a guru of crafting the ultimate soundtrack for the dance floor.

Born out of the solitude of lockdown and a desire to get back to playing shows, In Waves (and its deluxe vinyl version, which came out in January) is infused with a hypnotic hopefulness and adrenaline-inducing, pulsating beats that possess the body and encourage a loss of all inhibitions. He saw “a lot of tops off” during his recent shows in Australia, “which was fun”, of course. “The gigs have been amazing,” he says over a Zoom call before a concert in Vancouver. “Usually, when you finish a new album and you go on tour, you want to play that new stuff but people want to hear the old stuff. This time everyone wants to hear the new music.” The shows have turned venues into raves. “When I began making the album, I was coming off The xx’s third album tour [in 2017] and I had the intention that I was going to create all these ideas I’d had. When I went into my studio they felt so boring and I think any time I try to do something with too much intention it doesn’t work.” It makes sense for music that feels expansive, soulful and instinctive to the listener that Smith’s approach for this album was less calculated and more intuitive. “When I try to get in a state of mind where I’m letting it happen and enjoying it, it sounds like a cliché, but it takes me on a journey.”

Fit for a club, the album also has an impressive guest list, featuring collaborations with Kelsey Lu, Honey Dijon, Erykah Badu, Robyn, The Avalanches and his former bandmates. Collaboration has naturally underpinned Smith’s career. “I go through periods of trying to put myself out of my comfort zone and go and work with other people on their records. I find it difficult, but when I leave the studio, I’m very inspired because I can go home and make music on my own. It’s sort of like my safe space. All the collaborations that happened on the album, because it started in lockdown, came from just texting my friends and seeing how they were coping with it all. It was a very natural dialogue that ended up being a collaboration, which was a new way of working for me.” Looking ahead, Smith would like to work with an artist from the ground up, help them build an album and “bring somebody new into the ether”. Today, he’s excited about an artist who goes by the name SEES00000, who is supporting him on a run of shows. “He’s wicked, a really great producer and great DJ.” Or he’d like to collaborate with David Byrne. “I’ve been lucky enough to meet him a couple of times. He’s such a legend and an inspiring dude to chat to.”

For an artist who makes rave-ready tracks, Smith is notoriously reserved. He’s found solace in surfing, which he learnt to do 10 years ago on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu. “It’s really nice to have something in my life that I love with as much passion as I do with music but it’s totally unrelated. My whole life was about music until I started surfing. It makes me take my mind off work and resets me. You get to be in nature and sometimes it’s really scary and you have to overcome it… It just makes me really happy.”

It’s become part of his routine, along with doing The Artist’s Way’s “morning pages”. Julia Cameron’s 1992 self-help book, which advises writing early each day without thinking about the content, has become an essential exercise for many artists. He says he’s “writing my three pages of nonsense every morning” and has been placing an emphasis on getting out of his hotel every day when he’s on tour. “It’s very easy for me to just stay in my nice hotel room or work on music but I’ve found that even if I’m tired it doesn’t make me feel particularly happy or inspired. I’ve been trying to get out and go record shopping.” The best record he’s found recently was discovered “the day before yesterday” in Minneapolis on a trip with Numero Group, a local Chicago music collective and archival record label who opened for Smith that night of the tour. “We went to a record fair and to this music shop out of town run by this old geezer who is amazing. We were on the hunt for records and I found one that was incredible. It was a recording of a band from college – I think the college pressed the record and put it out, or maybe it was just for their library and was never released. It’s a gospel record with great drums and loads of good samples on it. It’s something you’d only really find in a small town like that because it would have never left the area. That was really great.”

A Jamie xx show is dependent on the venue. On this tour in particular, that daily record shopping has been a tool to create new, engaging, unique sets, as he plays the In Waves album over two hours mixed with the records he finds along the way. “I’m trying to find interesting ways to get in and out of my own music, remixing it live and trying to give people what they want but also have some fun. I’m still working it out.” A real crate-digger, he is consistent about searching out inspiration, which is what has helped establish his celebrated ability to flip, manipulate, loop and create new music inspired by his findings. While he’s always scanning the racks for under-the-radar records to sample, there are still songs he comes back to. “In Chicago I played this track I’ve been playing for probably 15 years, which is Justin Martin’s [2008] remix of Mushrooms by Marshall Jefferson [a pioneer of Chicago house music]. That is original Chicago, and it was one of the inspirations for all the spoken word on my record. So it was cool to be able to play that. It takes you on a great journey.”

The milestone moments for Smith have been the shows or venues where “something magical happened and it all worked”. There are also notable moments in his career, like when he scored Wayne McGregor’s acclaimed ballet Tree of Codes, which premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2015, or the many times he has scored music for or soundtracked various fashion shows – his music invokes movement, whether that’s on the dance floor or a runway. “[The ballet] introduced me to a whole new world and new people. I get to hang out with Olafur Eliasson [the Icelandic-Danish artist whose artworks accompanied McGregor’s ballet] once a year. I go to his studio in Berlin and hear his thoughts on the world and he’s always just so on point and makes me think about things in a different way… I do think that whenever I’ve put myself out there and tried to do something difficult. Those end up being the most rewarding moments in the end.” And of course, his work with The xx will continue to be a career-defining project.

Excitingly, Smith has been back in the studio with his bandmates Croft and Sim. While he’s worked with them both consistently over the years on their respective music, the three haven’t released an album together since 2017. “Romy and Oliver have done their own solo things so they’ve experienced what it’s like to do something without compromise. So it’s interesting coming back in the studio now and seeing the dynamics and trying to work out how we’re going to do it. Ninety per cent of the time it’s just talking and 10 per cent of the time is playing the instruments. I’m not sure how it’s going to work but that’s part of the fun and why we do it.” The simplicity in his approach to making music is a through line in his life. While he loves to tour he’s excited to go home to London. “I’m loving home more and more now that I’ve made a nice world for myself there. When I get home I’ll be excited to go back out after I’ve rebooted.”

Right now, he’s feeling inspired and energised by having spent the previous day with his best friend, who is also his stage tech. They’ve known each other since they were 14. “We just got a chance to hang out here in Vancouver. He came from a trip, like a solo exploration, a ‘finding himself’ type of thing. He visited all the spots that he visited 10 years ago when he previously did that and we just talked about how life has changed for him since then. It was really nice to get deep with my best friend. That was it. I woke up very happy and inspired this morning because of it.” Although he is one of the biggest and most influential producers in music today, Smith stays humble. “I’m just planning and trying to work out how to do this job with some longevity. I want to make sure I’m enjoying it. I’m looking forward to doing this new year right.” It feels and sounds like he’s entering a new chapter. “Well, it’s easy for me to say that in January. It’s a new chapter for everyone right now.”

Taken from Issue 25 of 10 Magazine Australia, MUSIC TALENT CREATIVE, out now.

Jamie wears Giorgio Armani throughout.

@jamie___xx

Photographer BYRON SPENCER
Fashion Editor ABBY BENNETT
Talent JAMIE XX
Text ROXY LOLA
Grooming FERNNANDO MIRANDA using DYSON BEAUTY
Photographer’s assistants NADEEMY BETROS and DANIEL CONGERTON
Fashion assistants LAUREN FARRELL and THOMAS MERL
Videographer JOSH CUMMINGS
Graphic artist GEORGE BARNES