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![]() jamie lidell interview
The funk soul brother. Jamie Lidell bounds into the kitchen at Warp Records, wearing white shoes and singing as he switches on the kettle. The 32-year-old producer, multi-instrumentalist, b-boxer and singer is in cheery form after an energising gig at London's Royal Festival Hall. “The idea was for me to be dressed as a fisherman,” he says. “But I'm not sure if it came across.” The costume philosophy (he previously performed in a plastic suit covered in money) is typically Lidell - off-the-wall, art-angled and at least 10 degrees left of his peers.There's good reason for his bounciness: his new album, Multiply (released on Warp), is an energetic hybrid of southern soul and electronica with the occasional analogue boost. The first single, When I Come Back Around, flagged up Multiply as one to watch, and has become a bona fide club hit. It contains all the elements that make the new album such an enjoyable listen: Lidell’s letting loose on the microphone underscored by monster b-lines and mash-up sonics. ![]() The follow-up to 2000’s angular Muddlin Gear is soaked in soul, with tunes like the title track coming across as a straight-up homage to Otis Redding or Sly Stone, a love letter to the deep soul talent of 60s Memphis. “I like the sheer vibration of singing,” says Lidell. “Humming, singing chills me out.” It was co-written with fellow Berliner, Mocky (“My spiritual guidance”). Lidell has lived in Berlin since 2000, making music in a converted factory in the old East Berlin zone. “It's chilled and cheap,” he says, relaxing back into a leather chair. “It's no metropolis but has all the trappings of the big city.” ![]() If you haven’t seen Lidell live, don’t worry. Warp are releasing a DVD, Live At The Albert Hall. It’s an extraordinary combination of laptop hijinks, scat vocals and Lidell's molecule-vibrating voice, as well as the eccentric costumes created by his in-house designer, Pablo Fiasco - hence the fishermen. It’s the kind of loose, chaotic performance kick-started by Matthew Herbert when he went on tour wearing spats and making beats out of crisp packets in the mid 90s. “Herbert did influence me,” he says. “He’s a brilliant performer.” It has always been so. Lidell learnt xylophone and drums at primary school before writing a melodrama for music and voice which attracted the curious charge from the school of “playing with the devil”. And next? Well, he's taking his twisted R&B and own-brand southern soul to all corners of the world. There’s a new Super_Collider record ready to roll and more songs percolating inside Lidell’s frame. “Really,” he says. “It’s just about getting to the heart of the song.”
Emma Warren
Jamie Lidell - Multiply, released 13 June 05 on Warp Records.
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