Jamie Stewart elucidates what goes into formulating the incomparable soundscape of ‘Xiu Xiu-isms’, and the process for creating the band’s newest release, ‘13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips.’
Stream: ’13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips’ – Xiu Xiu
Naturally, as the human race evolves, eddying between epochs and spiraling through revolutions across every medium, things will multiply; there will always be more books, more cars, more people.
To stand out from the melange, the unfathomable tide of existence and creation, is increasingly tricky, and yet, it is one of the most innate desires of most people, especially creatives. It is a line of reasoning regurgitated time and time again: “Modern music is just an amalgamation of everything that has come before it; we have run out of ‘new’ sounds.” So, is to be unique not just tricky, but impossible? Is new music as a concept imponderable? To label music as ‘unique’ then must be the greatest compliment one can currently bestow. Xiu Xiu are utterly individual, incomparable and inimitable. So much so, that upon announcing the release of a new album, despite being very familiar with their discography, I, probably along with many others, had no expectations whatsoever.
That’s quite a giddying thing – partial bewilderment, but complete openness due to having no reference points. What is created, to most, will sound like unmitigated chaos at times, like the machines of a factory, themselves built to make machines, all breaking down at once. The point I’m trying to assert is that this is a good thing. Before anything has been said, it is that relentless sound of Xiu Xiu that immediately, in my opinion, makes it so remarkable.
What can the process behind something so individual possibly be? Talking to Jamie Stewart, it’s evident that there is a swathe of influence, and an eloquent, attentive, voracious consumption of music from traditions all across the world that somehow creates Xiu Xiu. Furthermore, they make it clear that, yes, there is tinkering on occasion, or sometimes the inspiration drawn upon is a divine one, but the ‘noise’ of Xiu Xiu is expressionistic. There is an emotion to capture – the point is to ‘get something out of it.’
Xiu Xiu is not designed to exist in a vacuum. Jamie Stewart does not speak of their music with any kind of snootiness. Indeed, they illustrate how they approach music by opening their heart ‘as much as [I] possibly can.’
Xiu Xiu, in its cacophonies and dizzying uniqueness, is wonderfully human.
Their newest album, 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips (released September 27th via Polyvinyl), feels somewhat more accessible compared to other chapters in their discography. I spoke to Jamie Stewart to elucidate how such a record fits into the evolution of Xiu Xiu, and, indeed, try to figure out how Xiu Xiu’s music is composed at all.
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:: stream/purchase 13” Frank Beltrame… here ::
:: connect with Xiu Xiu here ::
“Common Loon” – Xiu Xiu
A CONVERSATION WITH XIU XIU
Atwood Magazine: The title of your album – 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. It’s quite a long title in comparison to previous releases of yours.
Jamie Stewart: Not unfair.
Could you explain what it means, what relevance it has to the album?
Jamie Stewart: I will try – the answer is not particularly illuminating. So, I have a lot of collections. One of the collections I have is of switchblades. I have a pair of the aforementioned Frank Beltrame Italian Stilettos; mine have imitation bison horn grips, I didn’t want to include it in the title… This has happened in the last few records we’ve done, and I can’t really explain why, but between Angela and myself there tends to be some set of physical objects that sort of become… talismans for us on a record, I don’t really know why they do, but they seem to have some significance. So they were floating around, and then I made a list of potential album titles – this particular title happened to be one of them. I showed it to Angela, and she immediately said, ‘That’s the one.’ That’s also the one that I was secretly hoping that she would pick. Why argue with fate?
I’m sure that this is a trend that you’re aware of. When it comes to people writing criticism on Xiu Xiu records, or just talking about having ingested your music, there tends to be an emphasis on the amount of Jamie Stewart they think they can detect in the music. Do you find you put yourself a lot into the music? Do you think it’s nonsense? Do you think there’s a lot of you in this new album?
Jamie Stewart: There’s a lot of everybody who worked on it. For us, the goal in every case since the beginning and probably forever is, forgive this for sounding corny, to open our hearts as much as we possibly can and put as much of that into the music that we’re working on. Invariably, there will be a fair amount of ourselves that is detectable in the music. On this record, it’s only Angela, David Kendrick and myself, so the three of us are very present on this one.
When people talk about your music, they say it’s noisy, or expressionistic, or ingenious. There is this reputation as it being a bastion of uniqueness. Is that something that plays upon your mind at all, or is it inconsequential? Do you sit down and think that people are expecting a certain amount of new sound, but I’m just going to make the music anyway?
Jamie Stewart: One of the most appealing aspects of music for us is that music is essentially an infinite puzzle. We want to explore as much of that as possible. Particularly over the last ten years, we’ve been fairly conscious. When the band started, we had no idea what we were doing, we were just making what we were making. As time went on, we wanted to consciously try things we hadn’t tried before. Not necessarily things that no one had done before, we’re not geniuses, but we definitely wanted to explore as much as we can.
Myself as a music fan, a lot of the bands I’m interested are bands that have been around for decades, and I appreciate that the majority of them have chosen to evolve. I have been inspired by them as a fan, and I’m operating under the assumption that other people will appreciate that as music listeners. We’re trying to complete the circle of what other artists have done, assuming that it will affect people that might listen to our music and take in a different direction.
Despite how noble a pursuit that is, there’s still an undeniable ‘Xiu Xiu-ness’ to your music, if that makes sense?
Jamie Stewart: Oh, it does. We will frequently make jokes about particular ‘Xiu Xiu-isms.’
Coming back to this newest release, I’m going to agree with the pre-release consensus; for someone who is approaching Xiu Xiu for the first time, this might be a more accessibly point for them. I find that it’s more hummable than other records, and there’s more of an emphasis on riffs, and, dare I say it, some moments are maybe more catchy. It is a different direction – how did it come about?
Jamie Stewart: We’re interested in music generally. Although we are very interested in “Western experimental music”, we’re also interested in songs. From the early 50s to the late 80s was a particularly magical time in Western music history, with just astonishing amounts of reinvention. ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ came out in 1967, and then ‘Violator’ by Depeche Mode came out… whenever it did, about twenty years later. They’re both extraordinarily innovative and vibrant records that have nothing to do with each other, other than that they’re part of Western folk music tradition. We’re as interested in that music as we are in other music.
When we’re starting a record and then working on a record, we try to have our conscious minds generally as uninvolved as possible, just to see what the universe, or the Goddess of music is beaming down for us to attempt. Very quickly, as we were working on it, we were really surprised by what happened. We’ve never had a record that’s all-out guitar riffs. It seemed to be coming from a genuine pen, we didn’t want to argue with the muse. We’d just made one of the most experimental records we’d ever done, we didn’t want to go, ‘Okay, let’s do that record one more time.’
When we’re starting a record and then working on a record, we try to have our conscious minds generally as uninvolved as possible, just to see what the universe, or the Goddess of music is beaming down for us to attempt.
I wanted to talk specifically about percussion. You've had moments in your discography which are especially tribal-sounding, or… exotic, which is a word I hate. I'm thinking all the way back to stuff from Knife Play, and then especially stuff in Girl With Basket of Fruit.
Jamie Stewart: We’re interested in a lot of different folk music, so we’re coming from a place of respect and interest in that music, or, in the case of Girl With Basket of Fruit, collaborating with original players of that music, rather than exotifying it, or acquiring it, or diluting it in some way.
That helps me put it in a better way, because ‘exotic’ it is a word that really bothers me. With this album, it sounds as though there’s, more often than not, more Westernised patterns. How important is percussion to Xiu Xiu as a whole, and what was different to the approach to it this time around?
Jamie Stewart: It’s one of the most fundamental aspects of what we’re always trying to do. At least half of the time, that would be the beginning of what a song is. We have a fairly big collection of percussion instruments, and are always looking to use them in ways we haven’t attempted before. I have a big collection of drum machines also. The first instrument that I became interested in was a drum machine. It was an obsession for me since the beginning. I still have an Alesis HR16B, my dad bought it for me. I still use it regularly. I think we use it on this record actually. For this record, David Kendrick is by his own definition, a ‘basher.’ Half of the songs have live drums, and half of them have drum machines (and just because I’m a nerd, I’d like to say the drum machine we used the most was a Roland CR-68, for fellow drum machine nerds). David pointedly played in that way, and we pointedly used that particular drum machine as it has a very specific timbre and a very specific history.
I can't say I know as much about drum machines, per se –
Jamie Stewart: That’s because you’re a normal person.
I take that as an insult, I’m not normal. I'm hoping you understand what I mean by this: ‘Xiu Xiu noises.’
Jamie Stewart: I call them ‘beeps.’
I’m fascinated to know if there is any sort of routine to discovering them, or if it is just tinkering.
Jamie Stewart: Both percussion and noises/beeps: you’ve hit upon the two aspect of music that I’m the most interested in, which I think is pretty apparent. I got interested in drum machines, and then I got interested in being a recording engineer before being a musician. One of the aspects that I really loved, that made me interested in recording, was specifically making crazy-ass sounds. So, in addition to a lot of songs starting with percussion, a lot of them will also start with a crazy-ass sound. So, we’ve made this crazy sound, how can we turn it into something that has some sort of contextual meaning? We have a studio and all manner of beep-making machines. The record producer John Congleton calls it a ‘flow state’ of plugging things in, turning knobs, keeping your ears open, and seeing what’s happening. In a way that is a type of routine, but I suppose the routine is to just see what happens. A lot of times there will be an emotional state that a song seems to be calling for, so there’ll be some very vague guiding principle behind the sound.
Are there are sounds that have made you think, “Oh, that’s a particularly good beep,” or is that like asking you to pick one of your favourite children?
Jamie Stewart: There have been things that we have done that we have stuck with for years and years. In the very early days, we were working on an EP called Chapel of the Chimes, where I had a laboratory beaker and some tiny pieces of plastic and an egg vibrator. The very original lineup was Cory McCulloch, Lauren Andrews and Yvonne Chen, and we had a little bedroom recording setup. We just put the egg vibrator into the beaker, and it made a very particular rattling sound. On and off we’ve used egg vibrators as a second set of percussion hands. We’re using one on this tour. There was another time where I was on tour with another band I played in called Former Ghosts. We stopped at a truck stop, and in this truck stop they had a bunch of hunting calls. ‘What could this possibly sound like?’ So I bought a bunch of them; I think now we have forty or fifty of them. They can be truly hideous-sounding. If you pitch-shift them, or add effects to them, they can change tremendously. So, the short answer is yes. We’re always on the hunt for other moments like that.
Is that what you would advise any other musicians who are trying to find their own weird noises, that you just keep looking for weird and unusual things?
Jamie Stewart: We have two ears and two eyes. Keep them alert and you’ll find something. Also, if anybody discovers anything cool, please feel very free to share.
Regarding the first track of this album, “Arp Omni,” it's quite an intimate opening. Is there a lot of time that goes into deciding how to open an album, or is that a quick decision?
Jamie Stewart: It’s a quick decision if it feels right. There’s a tremendous amount of care that we put into the song sequencing.
The single “Common Loon” feels different from a lot of other songs Xiu Xiu have written and released, because it feels like a celebration of individuality. In the past, writing has perhaps indicated less pride over oneself. This song sounds more exuberant. Am I right in thinking that there is more of a celebration of identity in “Common Loon”?
Jamie Stewart: It’s funny you should mention both “Arp Omni” and “Common Loon.” “Arp Omni” is a stone-cold love song with no negative consequences, which is not something we’ve ever done before, and “Common Loon” is definitely about lotting perversity with no negative consequences, which is not really something that we’ve done before. They are the few times where something good happens and it doesn’t necessarily mean that something bad is then going to happen. That’s my interpretation.
So you’re very happy to have a thoroughfare of interpretations?
Jamie Stewart: Oh yeah. I always feel hesitant to say what I think a song is about, just because I’m the singer or whatever. I don’t want to colour anybody’s interpretation. I made this record for other people to listen to, the results of this record are now none of my business. Someone may listen to this record and get something out of it, and hopefully what they get out of it is genuine and true, and I don’t want to influence that in any way. It’s not only okay, but it’s the point of making it – that somebody has their own interpretation.
There are a few references to space throughout the album. You've got things floating in space, you've got things above a space. Could you elucidate what ‘space’ represents in this album?
Jamie Stewart: Again, I shall say, to me, that aspect of it is a lot more about being in an uncertain space or being in a threatening space that you cannot escape from; being in a liminal space, or being somehow thrown into a dimension that you do not understand. It is a lot about being trapped and lost in a physicality, not in something very specific or tangible. There’s another song called ‘T.D.F.T.W.’ That’s about confronting a literal, physical devil. A lot of the illusions to space are, and a lot of the metaphors and references on this record are about dealing with a physical problem that is impossible to deal with.
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:: stream/purchase 13” Frank Beltrame… here ::
:: connect with Xiu Xiu here ::
“Veneficium” – Xiu Xiu
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