becktionary:

Pitchfork: How did Beck become involved with the album?

Jamie Lidell: The whole thing got kick-started by Beck, which was an incredible surprise. He called asking if he could be of some assistance with production work, like, “Why don’t you come over and we can just have a play and see how it feels?” He’s always supported me since we toured together [in 2006]. A few years ago, we did some strange sessions in L.A. which were just spontaneous, straight-to-vinyl recordings. He gets these ideas, like, “I need five musicians in this studio outside L.A. Who’s up for it? Jamie, you want to come down? It’ll be fun!” And you don’t really know if he ever uses a thing. Those sessions never led to anything, as far as I know. But we recorded a lot. I was doing Klaus Nomi shit and all kinds of operatics. That’s why Beck loved working with me, I think, because I’m up for anything.

During those sessions, I saw Beck doing this thing which I couldn’t quite understand at the time. He would come in with a scribbled sketch of a song, and he’d be strumming some chords, and he’d be like, “OK, I don’t know where this is going, but whatever.” And then he goes into a bit of a trance, scribbles for a minute, and is like, “Let’s do this.” I thought he had already written the lyrics and was just modifying them, but he was writing pretty much the entire song right on the spot. I can’t just freestyle a crazy song like that, but he can. That’s his real super power, it’s insane. He literally just goes, “I’ll just do a song about constellations.” And, just like that, it’s a Beck tune.

We had little physical face time during the making of Compass, but he inspired me to write. And then we did the Record Club together and then he introduced me to James Gadson, who ended up on my record. Beck is just this incredibly potent force in L.A. He knows everyone. And he wants to make good shit happen. He’s really like, “This could be a really cool combination. Let’s just put this with this.” It’s an old-school production method. I think he gets really excited to see chemical reactions between musicians.