Soundscaping and place-searching: TLOBF meet Seams

“I still think I’m totally blagging it”, says Seams – better known as Jami Welch, even to most of his listeners – as we tie up our interview which has now probably gone on too long, dangerously veering somewhere either side of the hour mark. Our Q and A session has somehow made multiple unravelling digressions and taken us on some idle, not entirely fit-for-publication tangents: weighing the socio-technological value of Google Plus, a detailed discussion of Jami’s love of all things Pokémon and even a nostalgic delve into Noughties reality TV’s most shameful and shameless moments, such as Sky One’s incomprehensibly immoral ‘There’s Something About Miriam’ and that time when Rebecca Loos wanked off a pig.

Seams first came to my knowledge around two years ago, supporting Gold Panda at Bristol’s Start the Bus on an impressive bill also featuring Dan Mantle and Minotaur Shock. I vaguely recall his energy really setting him apart from the others. That and perhaps that Welch was on first and the fact that I became progressively incoherent as the night went on. Either way, managing to make it home, I better yet was capable of posting a perfectly-worded tweet that singled him out as ‘One to watch’. Fast forward a good 12 hours and, with a headache, I find an email notification stating that Seams was now ‘following me on Twitter’. Nothing strange about that, right? Artists follow their fans all the time, don’t they? I mean, Yoko Ono follows me. Only difference being that I am not a fan of Yoko Ono. But I don’t quite think I was in the right state to tag the musician’s actual Twitter name, so this can only mean one thing – Welch searches his own name, which I think says a lot about Seams: a very humble musician juggling University and club nights, just happy to be making enough of a fee to cover his student rail fare.

Tonight Seams headlines the launch party for his new double A-side single, which has already gained mass applause from everyone but Pitchfork and recently received mainstream airplay from the likes of Huw Stephens and Lauren Laverne. I sit down with Welch at what seems a crossroads and first hurdle in his still budding career.

Seams – Hung Markets

The interview takes place in an up-market Primrose Hill pub, one that neither of us could properly afford to drink at under any other circumstances. Seams begins the conversation brashly: “I don’t really like dance music. I can’t dance and I hate clubbing.” This seems such a brazen thing for a promising wavemaker in the current electronic scene to say, especially someone whose entire music genre sees them spending many of their nights in dimly-lit nightclubs. “It only makes sense to me if you’re actually out, I don’t understand listening to that sort of music just sat in your bedroom. It’s the kind of music to dance to, not to chill to”, he adds, qualifying his original statement as middle-class families around us enjoy minimalist Sunday lunches and businessmen in open-collars relax over pints of bitter. “I actually hadn’t even heard what a drum machine was until I was 15. It just happens that through osmosis, I’ve fallen into making dance music.”

There does seem to be particular tension or divide in Seams’ output to date between these two things: between headphone-based music meant to be enjoyed alone, subduing the listener into a euphoric lull, and dancefloor-filler material made for live gig settings. The producer’s Tourist EP is a prime example of the former, capturing a snapshot of a summer dwelling in Berlin as Welch samples all that surrounds him – from street buskers to break-dancers and even the incoherent murmurings of passing pedestrians. The result of Seams’ time abroad was a record perfect for sole listening – hence the title ‘Tourist’, the EP was intended by its creator as a long-journey companion for the lone traveller.

New tracks ‘Focus Energy’ and ‘Motive Order’, the new 12″ out on Pictures Music that tonight Seams celebrates the release of at Camden’s Lock Tavern, are a departure from the tranquillity of the artist’s previous field recordings or the wide unravelling of Nightcycles. In fact the tracks are somewhat closer to the more corrosive elements off his sardonically entitled debut, A Juvenile Rush. The two songs are like conjoined twins separated at birth, each born from the same instruments and vocal samples. But like long-lost siblings, each go their separate ways, taking different routes and morphing into two varying identities. Later this evening, the two new tracks in particular will send the crowd into a head-bobbing and two-stepping frenzy, not quite the same “Ohhhhh shiiiitttt!” reaction that a Rusko beat-drop would receive, but nonetheless a step up from hipsters stood with hands in pockets.

Seams – Nightcycles

“I guess it was a semi-conscious decision for these tracks to be more upbeat and driving. I suppose they were born naturally as a product of playing more and more live shows, but also as a solution to a worry that my tracks may not completely adapt so well to a live gig setting”, Seams reflects – pausing for a second. “It’s really interesting the effect you can have on a crowd. I wanted the new tracks to show a different side, and at shows for people not to be just stood stroking their chins. It’s crazy the reaction you get from just putting a 4/4 kick-drum on. I started playing these tracks in Germany recently and they weren’t really digging the whole ten minutes of street noise, glockenspiels et cetera and as soon as the beat kicks in they were all ‘Yeeeeah, tecccchhnnooo!’ (shakes fist).”

Maybe the root of this dual nature of Seams’ music, of the contrast between home listening and live performance, comes from Welch’s upbringing and early foundations in music. It’s easy to distinguish between dance acts raised on house and trance and those brought up on an adolescence of alternative culture, not totally familiar with club life. “I’ve always been more of a guitar music kind of guy to be honest. I started by playing in bands at school, just doing Red Hot Chili Peppers covers”, Jami says as he sips on a pint of Guinness. “I think it was Beck that introduced me to the overlay of acoustic and digital, it was the whole guitars with drum machines crossover that gradually eased me into electronic music.” There’s certainly an element of varied instrumentalism in his music – like fellow glitch producer Gold Panda, many of Seams’ tracks feature more traditional-based instruments tucked away into the layers of digital sound. “I’m still interested in more traditional music and manual instruments but I don’t think I’m proficient in anything enough to really delve into that realm. I want to start doing stuff that’s more based around guitars and other live instruments but I think I’d need to spend a lot of time practising again. I restrung my guitar just this morning for the first time in around six years and it was quite depressing how little I can do with it now.”

As he plays the new tracks to a room packed full of impressed Camdenians, the vocal samples twitch and echo around the four walls. Vocals in particular are a relatively new feature in Seams’ back catalogue, but not quite the first time that Jami has tried them out. I mention in passing that the night previous I had been trying to find a rare track featuring vocals he once released that has since vanished from the surface of the web. As a strive towards utmost journalistic professionalism, I spent the good part of a half hour scrolling through his online scrapbook, rummaging through post after post of internet memes, video game references and instagram snaps to finally find the track called ‘Day’. “Man, was that a failed experiment!”, Seams says cringing at the very mention of the song that totalled at a concise 3 minutes, exhibiting Welch’s very only singing voice and what is possibly the closest thing to a pop song that the artist is likely to ever produce. “I wanted to start doing vocals so that there was more for people to watch on stage because I was becoming aware that someone humping a laptop for half hour is not exactly that entertaining to watch.” “But I deleted that song two weeks after I released it. Some people liked it but I was very conscious that it stuck out from everything else I had done and it fed way too many insecurities of doing singing.” I admit that it did sound a bit like it should be soundtracking The Sims as in-game loading music. “Well, EA are based in Guildford so I guess I could send them a cassette and see what they think”, he jokes in return.

Seams – Nachtmusik

I ask him if these newer releases are to set a precedent and whether he will explore vocal samples more in the future. “I don’t really listen to music for the lyrics. I’ll listen to the shape and the sound of the melodies but the words and the meanings attached don’t really matter so much. I was never really into the likes of Bob Dylan or Bright Eyes. I feel like you put your own meanings into songs and as soon as you start having words, it prevents that to a certain extent. Also, I don’t really think I have anything that interesting to say anyway.” Would, then, he be more comfortable using vocals as sound sources rather than as lyrics and language? “Definitely. If I were to use vocals again, especially if they were my own, it would be more as a sample texture rather than a lead top-line vocal. The two new tracks are based around specific vocal samples and trying to use them in two different ways. The parts come from Dirty Projectors, because I love how David Longstreth treats the voice as an instrument whereby the vocalists don’t always have to sing words but instead use their voices as harmonies”, Welch explains while he eats some salted cashew nuts, all the while conscious that he’s having press shots taken later. “I always wanted to do something like that but instead of doing it myself and failing badly, I just kinda stole his.”

But through all the talk of the divided self in his music and the way his tracks will be shaped in the future, Seams appears all the while self-conscious of not having uncovered a distinguishable style of his own. “All my friends say that they can hear a thread running through my music but I don’t think I’ve found that unique process, palette or sound yet. Everything is still a test or an experiment at the moment.” Between the release of Tourist and these new twin-tracks, Seams has churned out a magnitude of remixes – not quite to the prolificness of, say, Star Slinger but impressive nonetheless – remixing the likes Gold Panda, Memory Tapes and Chad Valley. “I actually find it really hard with remixes because it’s difficult to put your stamp on someone else’s music if you’re still not quite sure what your mould actually is. I feel like my remixes sound vastly different from my original material. I tend to have a minor existential crisis every time I endeavour to complete a remix.”

“Such a large gap of time between the creation of different tracks mean that they always sound quite naturally different. Tourist was recorded only five months before this new release and they sound worlds apart, so much so that I could never put the two together on a singular album.” This, and readily available home technology may explain why Seams and many artists today seem to churn out material as inspiration hits rather than gearing up for big yearly compilations. “But I’m not averse to making full-lengths. As a teenager who was really obsessed by concept albums, I’m really keen to create a substantial fifty-minute album experience, but up until now and due to other commitments, making things has always had to take somewhat of a backseat and has been quite sporadic.”

Memory Tapes – Yes I Know (Seams Remix)

Welch tells me he has recently finished University and is set to graduate in February. Like James Blake, Seams has used his time wisely and has appropriated his academic work dually as musical output. Klavierwerke was one of Blake’s projects at Goldsmiths and these tracks were likewise the product of juggling University with a musical career. “My intention was that for this final year I would concentrate solely on my degree and I wouldn’t do any music, but then I ended up playing loads of shows. I always found it strange how school work would get marked and then be totally redundant and forgotten about. That always made it really hard for me to get motivated. By shoehorning my own wants into work it helped motivate myself into actually doing the Uni work instead of just spending my days watching Jeremy Kyle and eating Pot Noodles.”

Seams, like most graduands, plans to head back home to take refuge for a few months, now that the heady heights of government-funded living has run dry. “Now I can spend a solid amount of time working on stuff and be able to do more than just four tracks. If I were to create a debut album then I’d want it to be more than a collection of tracks, more than just saying ‘Here’s twelve tracks that I’ve completed in the past year loosely packaged together’. There would have to be an idea or concept and I’d have to sit down and really spend time working on it.” Surrey may not be the ideal place for inspiration: it’s not exactly Bon Iver’s Wisconsin or the Berlin that inspired Tourist, but sometimes you just need to be left to your own devices, to escape needless distractions, and to focus all energy on productive things. “Maybe I’ll just find something on the internet to spark a massive wave of productivity”, he laughs.

The 12″ physical release of Focus Energy / Motive Order can be purchased via Bleep and more of Seams’ back-catalogue is available here.

Seams - Focus Energy / Motive Order