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DJ and producer James Thomas Smith, professionally known as Jamie xx, settles into adulthood with silence and stillness. That doesn&rsquo;t mean he&rsquo;s leaving the party. Following the success of his debut, In Colour (2015), he releases his second studio album, In Waves, to purge the trappings of his youth and transmute its fluctuations into a record thumping with sonic mastery. 
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The night can be a raucous circus, and raves can be a landfill of regret. But good music can restore people&rsquo;s nocturnal reserves amid sweat, body-bumping, and photo dumps. Enter Jamie xx, the coy English musician from the Mercury Prize-winning indie band The xx. His propensity for sound earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album for In Colour in 2016. Contrary to his demeanor, his music doesn&rsquo;t shy away from contact. Instead, he has an ear for warble that transmits signals into our minds as if he&rsquo;s a mad scientist. Expect the exchange to feel like a concoction of brain zaps and warm hugs. His music will make you cling to life.
 In Colour arrives at this attribute with tracks such as Gosh whose marching beats quake with the intensity of an uprising. Sleep Sound, on the other hand, surrounds the listener with melodic rumbles; its video dissects the anatomy of sound by featuring deaf dancers whose movements show that music isn&rsquo;t only felt by the ears because acoustic waves travel through tremors and vibrations. It&rsquo;s a whole-body experience.
 In Waves follows its predecessor&rsquo;s ability to connect the mind and body, but it also leaves its furtive gaze to highlight how dancing can be enjoyed, not in isolation, but even when everyone&rsquo;s watching.
 For instance, Baddy on the Floor, featuring Honey Dijon, is an ecstatic banger for all ages reminiscent of 90s house with its piano flourishes and classic disco horn sections. Meanwhile, Life, featuring Robyn, is as sassy as it can get with its one-liner hook, &ldquo;You&rsquo;re giving me,&rdquo; which is perfect for voguing under strobe lights. The tone shifts in Breather, a meditative drone full of affirmations. It tells us to breathe, but its beats leave us breathless. The euphoria hits with Daffodil, featuring Kelsey Lu, John Glacier, and Panda Bear. Its lyrics evoke sensations of &ldquo;floating on clouds of ecstasy.&rdquo; The concluding track, Falling Together, is an anthemic chorus capturing the fleeting decadence of moments on the dance floor. It culminates In Waves&rsquo; celebration of music&rsquo;s capacity to make crowds feel as one and heal as one.
 In this L&rsquo;Officiel interview, I catch up with Jamie xx before his world tour. He&rsquo;s quiet as expected, but he laughs when I ask him if he&rsquo;s a baddy on the dance floor.

I heard that In Waves was influenced by your interest in surfing. How does it thematically conclude your current album? I&rsquo;ve been surfing for about 10 years, and it&rsquo;s something totally outside of music for me, really. It doesn&rsquo;t go hand in hand with what I do because it requires you to get up very early in the morning, and it&rsquo;s very satisfying just on its own. I try and separate the two and take breaks to go surfing, but it&rsquo;s very hard to make music and surf at the same time.
 Why did you choose waves? Can you tell us more about your progression from In Colour to In Waves? Well, it&rsquo;s been a long time, and I think I&rsquo;ve done a lot of growing up since In Colour. We&rsquo;ve all had a lot of things going on in our lives and globally, and I&rsquo;ve had a lot of ups and downs, even in terms of my music-making. I think those are the waves that were illustrated on the album cover and in the title; it represents that journey.
 What changes have you professionally and personally experienced in the past decade that helped shape the album? It was personally very helpful for me to have time during the pandemic and just be at home and sort of take stock of everything that&rsquo;s happened in my life since I was a teenager. I sort of fell in love with what I do again rather than always looking to the next thing and the next gig and thinking about finishing the next album. I just got to be calm and still and just make music for the fun of it, which was how I started.
 I also read that it ignited your love for music and listening to your parents&rsquo; old soul and jazz records. What records inspired the album? I&rsquo;m always listening to all different types of music. There was a period when I couldn&rsquo;t listen to much modern music because it was making me think about work. So, I listened to music from the 60s and 70s, which is the music that I grew up on, and still the music that I will listen to if I just want to relax. Out of that came a lot of the samples that ended up being on the record.

Sleep Sound Music Video 

Jamie xx - Sleep Sound (Music Video)

Would you say you&rsquo;re a calmer person altogether? Yeah, I think so. That&rsquo;s also just an age thing. Most people in their 30s get a bit more of a grasp on what they love, what&rsquo;s good for them, and how to live their lives better. I mean, I&rsquo;m still trying every day to be better as we all are.
 As a producer and DJ, how do you hunt for new music especially that the concept of algorithm is controversial? I go to record shops a lot. It&rsquo;s also a great way to explore cities when you only have one day in a place. It&rsquo;s usually where all the cool stuff is anyway. I do a lot of hunting on Discogs and stuff like that, too. I have a lot of friends who make great music and send me stuff. So yeah, lots of different avenues.
 Do you have any favorite stores or cities to hunt for new music? Everywhere has its gems. Tokyo is incredible for buying records, but pretty much every city I go to, I try and hone in on the music that&rsquo;s from the area as well. Like in America, there are so many different scenes, even within, say, soul music, where there were small bands from one state that made a particular sound or one label from a particular place. It&rsquo;s really interesting to dive into history that way.
 In a previous interview, you mentioned how challenging it can be to work with other artists. For example, Drake&rsquo;s production setup was crowded when you worked with him. How did you pick your collaborators for this album? Well, the album started properly in the lockdown. I was texting my friends because we couldn&rsquo;t be in the studios together anyway. So, I ended up collaborating with people I could text and email rather than going to studios and meeting people for the first time and spending days together trying to get to know each other. It was a much more natural way of doing it.
 You come off as reserved for some people, and they would sometimes even describe your music as incorporating the sound of silence, even if it&rsquo;s about raving or noise. Do you agree? Also, are you more attracted to silence or noise? I am more attracted to silence &mdash; not noise ever, but great sound, loud sound. That&rsquo;s good. Noise is my least favorite thing.
 What is it about silence that attracts you to it? Silence is often the best tool, the best instrument. It gives you space to surprise a listener.

Silence is often the best tool, the best instrument. It gives you space to surprise a listener.

In Waves Album Art

From Daffodil to Falling Together, there&rsquo;s an indescribable sense of euphoria in your tracks. Do you aspire to evoke euphoria when creating music? Sometimes. I love those moments on the dance floor. I love to be DJing when you create those moments, but you have to build up to them. You know, if it&rsquo;s all euphoria, then the euphoria wears off. A lot of current dance music leans heavily on euphoria, and it defeats the point, and it all becomes a little bit wishy-washy in a way. I just try and be as eclectic as possible.
 How important is rave culture to you? Also, are you a baddy on the dance on the floor or do you prefer raving in an isolated corner? No, when I go dancing, I&rsquo;ll go dancing. It&rsquo;s one of my favorite things to do.
 How has rave culture changed since you started? One of the things I love about dance music is it&rsquo;s always evolving, and it&rsquo;s probably one of the fastest-evolving genres of music. It&rsquo;s always self-referential but trying to do something new at the same time. [There are] endless possibilities. Since I fell in love with dance music, there have been so many waves of it. I&rsquo;ve seen it go from being something that started within a small friend group, like Dubstep did in a small area in London, then became massive. Now, if somebody creates a new sound, it&rsquo;s instantly global because of social media and streaming. It changed a lot. Sometimes, it&rsquo;s hard to get to grips with.
 I interviewed Oliver Sim, who said that Hideous Bastard was his origin story. How about you? How would you frame the narrative of In Waves? I think it&rsquo;s sort of my journey of trying to grow up and trying to settle down as a human being rather than just a teenager who toured endlessly until he was 30. It represents where I&rsquo;m at in my life now and how lucky I am to be able to travel the world and experience all these different cultures and different dance music scenes. I&rsquo;ve tried to incorporate everything I&rsquo;ve seen over the last 15 years of doing this.

Falling Together Music Video 

Jamie xx - Falling Together ft. Oona Doherty

You&rsquo;re coming to Manila, right? How do you envision the live experience of In Waves? Are there any elements of the album that you&rsquo;re especially excited to bring to the stage? I&rsquo;ve been playing and testing these songs for a while. That&rsquo;s how I wrote them and how I finished them &mdash; watching audiences react to them. I&rsquo;m excited for people to actually know the songs now and to see how different they will be.
 The xx are your closest friends and collaborators. What have you learned from them that you incorporate in your solo work? I&rsquo;ve learned everything from them. I owe everything to them for where I&rsquo;m at now. We all feel like that for each other. We all need to learn how to communicate and stay as close as we were as life goes on. We all find our own paths in life. It&rsquo;s harder to stay together as a band. That&rsquo;s going to be the tricky bit, but we&rsquo;re working on it.
 For someone who creates euphoric music, what has been the most euphoric musical experience you&rsquo;ve had? I&rsquo;ve had a lot of euphoric musical experiences. The last one I had, I was in New York, and I built my own club for five days. I had all my favorite DJs come down and Fran&ccedil;ois K came to play. I got to talk to him for about an hour about how the New York dance music scene evolved over his time of DJing, which has been a long time. He was around to see the genesis of it. Then he played the most mind-blowing set &mdash; one of the best sets I&rsquo;ve ever seen. It was euphoric, and it brought the whole room together. It reminded me why I love this job.

Match the Frequency: Jamie xx Returns with a Renewed Sense of Euphoria

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