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Child slave labour put Jamie Lidell on the path to a music career. Not in a bad way. It’s just when his primary school teacher realised he could sing he made him the “guinea pig” to test out kid’s songs he wrote in his spare time. Now the 31-year-old is something of a “homeless nomad” wandering from his base in Berlin, back home to England to promote his second album, 'Multiply', out this month.
As a former half of electro-funk outfit Super_Collider you might have heard of Lidell, you might even have his first album 'Muddlin' Gear', a record that his label Warp describe as “digital derangement and deformed R’n’B”. Or you may have seen him at the likes of Sonar and been “shocked, or pleasantly surprised”, by a soul voice, likened to Prince, coming out of a white boy from Cambridge.
But it’s with the release of 'Multiply' that you’re going to understand the full impact of his “soul force music”. If you asked him, one of reasons for making the new record more accessible was to get a more mixed audience to see him, moving away from “teenage adolescent boys asking ’How does that computer thing work?’”. Lidell, and his work is a constant dichotomy. He describes himself as “scatty, with multiple personalities, fictions and manic characteristics”, but in a good way. And while 'Multiply' could be seen as more commercial, it's possibly a braver move for an artist who could spend his life hiding behind difficult or hard to comprehend music. “It’s really easy to hide behind the vocals and noise: the elusive electronic world.”
Now he’s putting himself out there. Still deconstructing the soul music of his past, the music that he loves, but also making it easier for people to understand, and making it easier to criticise, or praise, it. Being encouraged to sing “with no boundaries” from a young age gave Lidell his ability to mix genres, fiddle about on samplers - "the most powerful musical technology yet" - and try to produce something fresh. If the record is the more definitive version of his work, then the stage show is the experiment, the “crazy, dizzying, tornadoesque experience” where everything is built from scratch and you can sometimes find Lidell getting lost in the moment, staring at a frame of 16mm film covering his body, making his “tape suit”. “Sometimes I see something and it trips me out, and I’m like ‘Oh shit’ looking down at myself and I think I have got a few powers up my sleeve.”
It’s not surprising then with live shows which mix art, film and music that his stage heroes are the likes of Prince and Bowie, as he tries to veer away from being a kid in a t-shirt standing behind a laptop. Slowly winning fans across the world, and with the release of an album that has the potential to cross over Lidell should feel quite confident about his talent. But he doesn’t, and that’s what keeps him going. “I have never felt like a professional, always like an amateur. I sometimes wish that wasn’t the case but as soon as I stop trying something happens that humbles you and gives you a kick to rise to the challenge.”
A cross over challenge for Jamie Lidell? More like a forgone conclusion.
'Multiply' is released on June 13. You can catch Lidell perform live at the Sonar Dance Music Festival in Barcelona between June 16-18, Glastonbury on Sunday June 26 and TDK Cross Central on Saturday 27th August!
