JAMIE LIDELL
Jul 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Jonathan Zwickel
Like a circus bear cycling a tightrope, balance is everything for Jamie Lidell. Formerly known as one-half of tech-noise duo Super_Collider, the 32-year-old British-born performer has recently developed a new persona, flaunting his potent, husky tenor as a 21st-century soulman. Last year's acclaimed Multiply (Warp), an album recorded with Motown dust in its grooves and digital sparks in its step, properly introduced the new Lidell to the world. But he'd been unleashed onstage a few years ago when Lidell saw the future of electronic music and decided to meet it head on.
“There seems to be a shift of emphasis from records to live,” he says while on a tour stop in L.A., “So I concentrated my efforts on a unique live approach. About four years ago I thought, ‘Oh God, if I'm left as a recording artist, I'm gonna sink. Okay, what am I good at? I'm not very good at keyboards; I'm not very good at guitar. I've always been obsessed with singing, and I've always been obsessed by technology. I gotta bring these things together.’”
The resulting combination is a one-man, on-the-fly, electro-soul stage show that borders on indescribable. Teetering on a tenuous man/machine interface, Lidell manipulates five tracks simultaneously in real time. He'll open with a bare-bones beatbox; lay down a pedal-effected bass line; spray electronic effects via a laptop, guitar or keys; and then carve out vocal parts, often singing lead and backup himself.
“It started out with my dream to make a system that would allow me to jam with my voice,” he says. “That way I could make things spontaneously — and it's the only instrument I could really play. Given that that was the case, the voice is a monophonic instrument; only one sound comes out at a time unless you're Rahzel or one of those freaks. So I thought, ‘Well, I need to make a system that would allow me to layer myself on myself,’ kind of a ‘maxi-me,’ if you like.”
He experimented with various guitar-effects pedals, but their limited customization proved frustrating. So he moved on to an old G4 with a multichannel soundcard and taught himself Max/MSP, a blank-slate programming environment that allowed him more modular, improvised control of the tracks he created. “It puts out all the five outputs of the machine on separate channels on a mixing desk, which allows me further control to add effects, to subtract different layers. It's kinda like juggling plates — you have to remember what's on what.”
But by stepping out from behind his gear to improvise as the saucy, raw-throated frontman of his own one-man band, Lidell distances himself from the hardcore laptop artists: “The computer is just sort of sitting there like a tape recorder. I'm not gazing into its screen longingly.”
Juggling his on-the-spot sampling, frontman charisma and onstage improvisations (“I don't like the idea of having a fixed set,” he says), Lidell's show is a tightrope act that ends up being one of the most thrilling in the business. From the manic energy of his live shows to the tempered soul of Multiply, Lidell navigates the stage and the studio with equal enthusiasm. “I just want to separate the disciplines of live and recording a little bit,” he says. “The live thing is like an explosion, like a firework, bang! It's all over, and you go home. And when you go home, you have the sonic statue of the album, which is eternal, made of stone.”
As he's learned, taking homegrown technology on the road can teach you some important lessons. “More isn't always more. That's what I have to keep reminding myself,” he says. “You really have to work out a balance between shit, and it's a fucking difficult thing.”
LIDELL LIVE
Akai MPC1000 sampler
Apple Powerbook G4 with OS 9 running Cycling '74 Max/MSP
Boss Octaver OC-2 pedal
FaderFox Controller
Korg MS-20 synth
Lexicon PCM81 effects processor
Line 6 Delay pedal
M-Audio Oxygen8 keyboard controller
Mackie 1604-VLZ mixer
Moog Minimoog synth, Moogerfooger effects pedal
Shure SM58 mics (2)
Yamaha SPX90 effects processor
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