Talkback: Jamie Stewart

Xiu Xiu are Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart.Photo: Eva Louise Hoppe

With Xiu Xiu, Berlin‑based American artist and producer Jamie Stewart has for over two decades been at the vanguard of experimental‑leaning indie rock. Their latest release is a wildly eclectic covers album, Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1.

At the moment I can’t stop listening to

Clyde McPhatter’s Greatest Hits. My bandmate Angela [Seo] and I are massive fans of Black American ’60s soul. I’ve always been particularly blown away with records from that era. It was a group of people in a room, all live, and yet it sounds so extraordinarily well put together, so rich and so thoughtful. I mean, clearly they put an extraordinary amount of time into the mic placement, and they must have done a ton of run‑throughs to get the balance as good as they did. And it’s clearly just a two‑track, like, all the instruments are on one side, the vocals are on one side, with a little bit of bleed. At that time, not an extreme choice. But on a record today, that would be a totally extreme choice. So it’s interesting to listen to something where they were just dealing with the technical limitations of the time and not having a super clear — I don’t want to say understanding — but a clear conception of what the possibilities of stereo were.

A lot of the very first stereo records, people were just going, “OK, well, we’ve only done mono. Let’s just try this fu*cking two‑track thing. Everybody hates it. We all think it sounds like shit, but the record company is demanding we do it at stereo, because they can feel like they could sell more records that way, or something.” So, you know, you’ve got the horns and the bass and the drums and the guitar and the organ and the piano like all cranked on one ear, and then the vocal blasting on the other side. It always sounds pretty incredible.

The artist I’d most like to collaborate with

Since I was a kid, Prince has been my number one. When I was a little kid, I was listening to songs like ‘Darling Nikki’. That’s not a song for a nine‑year‑old! But as an adult, I realised how much his music shaped me, in that it was really totally insanely filthy at times, but also done with an extraordinary amount of emotionality and care and musical thoughtfulness. And he was, you know, technically one of the best musicians there ever was. I’m technically not a particularly good musician. I mean, I work real hard and I’m willing to do 100 takes to get something to where it needs to go. But it would be fascinating to me to work with somebody who is both largely responsible for me having such a dirty musical mind, but also who’s 9000 times the player that I’ll ever be!

The first thing I look for in...