Read the transcript here

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This episode is a conversation between Jamie Stewart and Martin Hargreaves. Jamie Stewart is a musician and the founder of Xiu Xiu, an experimental group they began in 2002. Across more than two decades, Xiu Xiu's music has moved through noise, tenderness, violence, desire, grief, politics, and intimacy. Martin Hargreaves is a dramaturg and writer whose interests, in his own words, "vacillate between boredom and hysteria." Their research moves across performance and performativity, recent histories of contemporary dance, queering practices, and camp misunderstandings.

In this episode, Jamie and Martin move through music, performance, bodies, intensity, and the apocalyptic, returning to some of the questions that have accompanied choreographing the apocalypse from its beginning.

Find out more about Jamie and Martin on our People page.

To the Glossary Jamie donates borg (sometimes BORG, short for blackout rage gallon). and Martin donates Inconvenience "At whatever scale and duration, “inconvenience” describes a feeling state that registers one’s implication in the pressures of coexistence. In that state the body is paying attention, affirming that what’s in front of you is not all that’s acting on or in you." (Lauren Berlant, 2022, p2-3).

This episode, is part of a series of a sharp prickled growth on flower stems, found on roses. thorns þ called Choreographing the Apocalypse. It is curated by Mine Kaplangı and is part of their ongoing research into queer and trans imaginaries of the apocalypses. Through the series they’re inviting artists, thinkers, and somatic practitioners to explore apocalyptic thinking through speculative, world building and radically intimate frameworks. The project is inspired by Oxana Timofeeva’s idea that apocalypse is not a singular event, but a cyclical and continuous condition. You can read a text written by Mine that accompanies the series here: Between Two Infinities: Choreographing the Apocalypse.

This series is produced and edited by Hester Cant. The series is curated by Mine Kaplangı with additional concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith.

Transcript:

MARTIN:

Hello, and welcome to a sharp prickled growth on flower stems, found on roses. thorns þ, a podcast where we bring you conversations in relation to concepts of the choreographic the choreographic can refer to choreography, and to the writing of dancing bodies, but it can also refer to modes of generating and circumscribing movement that do not register as dance, or as art works. . þ thorns þ is produced as part of the Rose Choreographic School at Sadler's Wells. I'm Martin Hargreaves, Head of the Choreographic School. I've invited Mine Kaplangı to curate a series of the podcast, and I'll hand over now to Mine to explain more.

MINE:

Hi, my name is Mine Kaplangı. I'm a Folkstone-based curator and art mediator from Istanbul. We have titled the series Choreographing the Apocalypse, and it forms part of my ongoing research into queer and trans imaginaries of the apocalypse. Through the series, I invite artists, thinkers, musicians, and somatic practitioners to explore apocalyptic thinking through speculative world-building and radically intimate frameworks.

For the final episode of the series, Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu is in conversation with Martin Hargreaves, Head of the Rose Choreographic School. Jamie Stewart is a musician and the founder of Xiu Xiu, an experimental group they began in 2002. Across more than two decades, Xiu Xiu's music has moved through noise, tenderness, violence, desire, grief, politics, and intimacy. Their work has always felt somehow tuned to the apocalypse to me, not necessarily apocalypse as an ending, but as something intimate, ongoing, excessive, and already here Their recent project, Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, responding to David Lynch's Eraserhead, feels especially resonant with many of the questions that have travelled through this series. Martin Hargreaves is a dramaturg and writer whose interests, in his own words, "vacillate between boredom and hysteria." Their research moves across performance and performativity, recent histories of contemporary dance, queering practices, and camp misunderstandings.

There's a particular kinship between Martin and Xiu Xiu's music and practice, which made this conversation feel like a very fitting place to end the series. Together, Jamie and Martin move through music, performance, bodies, intensity, and the apocalyptic, returning to some of the questions that have accompanied choreographing the apocalypse from its beginning. A full transcript of this episode, along with the links to Xiu Xiu's work and further resources from the conversation, can be found on our website. The transition sounds you'll hear during this episode are field recordings of historic industrial machinery.

MARTIN:

So maybe a place to start is with this idea of the apocalypse, and Mine's proposal to us came through a reading of Oxana Timofeeva, who's a Russian scholar based in Berlin, who has been writing in relationship to the apocalypse away from a kind of Western notion that the apocalypse will be this day of judgment that we're all waiting for, that will come along and somehow both punish us but redeem us. And instead, she's proposing that the apocalypse has happened, is happening, will happen. We're, we're constantly dealing with catastrophe in some ways, and she does distinguish between catastrophe and a more sort of personalized notion of trauma. If I think about Xiu Xiu, I do think of catastrophe in some way as-

JAMIE:

That’s fair.

MARTIN:

Yeah. Because in some ways you are thinking about how to broadly make art in conditions that are far from ideal and asking the question, what is it that we're doing when we make art? Why would we make art under such horrendous conditions that we live through? And if I think of-- Maybe if we start with Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, the most recent album, there's something really nice in the liner notes where you describe Eraserhead, the film by David Lynch, as a planet, and you imagine yourself to be the kind of space junk that's orbiting, like dead extraterrestrials, satellites. There’s something about this relationship to Eraserhead where it's not a copy. It's almost... It is an homage, but it's a strange kind of an homage. You're kind of acknowledging there's some kind of gravitational pull that trapped you. And I'm interested maybe to start there in this thing of one of the ways that we survive the ongoing apocalypse is to really avow the things that hold us in relation.

JAMIE:

Well, there aren't a lot of things that humans have done that are really any good. And, and one of-- probably the number one is aesthetic expression or aesthetic exploration. And I haven't thought about it and not 'cause it's not very present on my mind, but it's probably just too terrifying to think about as I'm a catastrophising person and extremely worried all the time anyway. So, I haven't thought about it formally, but it's very definitely in my psyche and certainly in my physical body. But I mean, in the midst of the apocalypse, leaning on art, like really, what else is there to do other than violent, bloody revolution? There's not a lot left, I guess. I mean, I probably certainly believe that. I don't want to believe that, and this, this is probably the first time I've said it out loud. But I mean, what else are we gonna do other than, in the time that's left, is just to say thank you to the one main thing that humans got right in the midst of humans destroying everything else that humans have tried to get right but haven't gotten right? I don't know. I don't know how else to think about it. I d- you know, I have little to no power in the world to do anything other than that. I'm not brave enough to participate in targeted assassinations, so I don't know what else to do.

MARTIN:

I mean, this saying thank you resonates also, I guess-- I mean, it resonates with Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, also with Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu, the compilation album that came out earlier this year. This being in relation. So, but Eraserhead Xiu Xiu is not a copy of the original soundtrack, but it's in some ways, you're really in the live work. In the film that is the backdrop to you and Angela playing this music. You're not repeating something that David Lynch did, but you're kind of saying this has residue in the world. It has done something. It's put something out into the world that you can reckon with. You can situate yourself. In some ways, it's a different way of thinking authorship as well, and I think this across the whole of kind of the work that you've done with Xiu Xiu, is you've always done covers, but not covers as a way to put a Xiu Xiu stamp onto something. It's almost the opposite. It's like to see how this thing stamps on you, to understand what it might be to take a slight step to the side of either Xiu Xiu or Jamie Stewart and try on something, which is the cover. So, the cover version isn't about augmenting yourself in any way. It feels like it's a little bit undoing you, and it feels like Eraserhead Xiu Xiu is definitely a way of undoing Xiu Xiu as well as extending Xiu Xiu.

JAMIE:

That's insightful. I mean, for… We have done covers since the very beginning of the band, and it has always been about saying thank you to art and in each song that we have covered specifically saying thank you to that song. We did this Eraserhead concert and we did a record of Twin Peaks also. I mean, we would not exist without David Lynch's work. I mean, if I had to think of three artists that defined us and made it possible for the band that I've spent my adult life pursuing, you know, he would be one of them. Part of the way that we try to say thank you is to explore a work and try to illustrate how that work has made us who we are, particularly with the David Lynch covers records that we have done. It is very much not about trying to, you know, infuse ourselves into that universe as it is to illustrate how that universe has infused itself within us. Does that make sense? Am I being cl- Did I answer your question?

MARTIN:

Yeah, yeah.

JAMIE:

Okay.

MARTIN:

Yeah. It's a different kind of ... It seems far less authorial in, in like, you're not trying to claim authority over something.

JAMIE:

No, not, not in- No ... not in any way. In, in- Yeah ... it is always about trying to show gratitude for what we have gotten from that music and to also to illustrate what we have gotten from that music.

MARTIN:

There's something in the record that feels also very personal. It doesn't, it's not just an abstract relation to, to David Lynch's world. It's really, you're really avowing something that it's had an impact on you.

JAMIE:

For us deeply was I was quite surprised at how upset I was when he died. I mean, you know, many of my idols have died in the last decade, but I actually mean, I am, and I, I had the opportunity to meet David Lynch, but I was too scared to do it. But I found out while I was in our studio one night, and, you know, I, like, sat down on the floor and I was by myself and just sat down on the floor and started crying, which I did not expect that to be my reaction. I mean I didn't cry when Prince died and when David Bowie died and when Scott Walker died. I didn't cry when Florian Schneider died. But I don't know, it, it, it kicked me really, really, really hard in the guts. Him especially has been a, I don't want to say like a parental figure, but in a lot of ways a parental figure.

MARTIN:

Obviously, we've been talking about catastrophe as, as a way of thinking of destruction as a really negative force that, that's pushing us to- towards unliveable situations. But there's a kind of destruction that art does also, which I feel like David-- Like the first time, I think-- I'm trying to remember if, if actually Eraserhead was the first David Lynch film I saw. I mean, I definitely became obsessed with Twin Peaks, and it has a certain kind of destructive force on you if you really allow something into your, as a fan or as a, as something that really shifts your whole cosmology. Suddenly, all the coordinates that you had for life suddenly start to need recalibrating. So it-

JAMIE:

Hopefully.

MARTIN:

Yeah. Hopefully, yes. And it seems like for you, Lynch did that for you.

JAMIE:

Oh, oh, absolutely, yeah. It took me a minute to really realize that I had kind of accidentally come across some of his works when I was too young to really absorb them. And then when I came back to them when I was a little older, I kind of completely forgot that I had seen them. But because I had seen them at all, it was in my subconsciousness, and I was like, "Oh, this thing has quietly been forming me into the gross teenager that I am now."

MARTIN:

So, you never met him? I thought you-

JAMIE:

We played at the first total retrospective of his work, and then did the record with, with HEXA and then the, the couple records with Twin Peaks and got in- got invited to a fundraiser of his for his meditation institution. And Angela, my bandmate, met him, but I was just too freaked out. And then he was aware of the work that we had done and invited us to play a concert that he curated also. And I-- He was on the side of the stage while we were playing, which I'm really glad I did not know then either-

MARTIN:

Wow!

JAMIE:

'cause I would've d- been, like, it'd been impossible for me to play. Through other people, I found out he was very supportive of our, of our exploration and couldn't think of anything that would be a bigger honour for me. But I think I was just, like, afraid of, like, what would I say? Or, like, I just didn't wanna, I didn't wanna burst the bubble. I liked him being a kind of, you know, art spirit for me rather than necessarily a person, and I just didn't wanna make an ass of myself, which I undoubtedly would have done.

MARTIN:

I mean, I guess, I guess everybody is a disappointment at some point, and it's like with the people that you build into your own personal constellation map, you kind of-- The worst thing is to meet them sometimes because you get-

JAMIE:

Angela said he was delightful and very, very warm. She thought she had a great interaction with him.

MARTIN:

Okay.

JAMIE:

But she's cooler than me, so I mean- ... you know, she probably didn't do anything stupid.

MARTIN:

But if we shift from Eraserhead Xiu Xiu to Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu, the relationship that you have there to those songs, I mean, again, you're saying thank you to these songs, and it, it comes out of the subscription project that you have where people can sign up and every month they get a cover version, you revisiting something from the Xiu Xiu catalogue, and then a piece of experimental noise, I guess, which is in series usually named after animals or plants or something, so that we-- every month you get three things which are in some ways that they're not related, but they seem to be part of this ongoing collaboration of Xiu Xiu. And I'm interested in the-- maybe just to talk about covers, because if it's not driven like it was with David Lynch by this really strong desire to articulate your relationship to David Lynch's films. What drives you to pick the songs that you choose for the cover versions?

JAMIE:

It's, I mean, it's, it's not as on a, a general... I mean, not in every case, but in most cases it's not as on a deeper level as it is with David Lynch. But it's the same thing. I mean, it's just a, it's always a song that we love. But, you know, I mean, watermelon is my number one favourite fruit of all time, and so David Lynch is watermelon, but I also totally like grapes. I don't like them as much, but I still really like them. So, you know, so it's the same. We- these are songs that we've learned something from, and by covering them, learn even more from them, and they're also songs that, you know, as fans of music, sometimes in a casual way, you know, I hear at the gym, I'm, and I'm like, "Oh, this is a groovy beat. This would be fun to do." Or it's a song that I've been listening to since I was 10 years old and is one of the most important pieces of music in my entire life. It's satisfying and meaningful to us in different ways to, to get to explore them, and hopefully for somebody who listens to them, they get something out of it too.

MARTIN:

The range, I mean, I was talking to a friend about this and saying, like, in the subscription service at least, you go from Bob Dylan to Throbbing Gristle, Kylie Minogue to Bikini Kill, Nancy Sinatra to Diamanda Galas. It's like a ... partly it's an education. Like, if I listen to these covers and then go and follow who you're covering, I, I'll see a whole range of musical history. But it feels like it's not eclecticism for its own sake. Like, there's no irony here.

JAMIE:

No, never.

MARTIN:

I think that, that's important to say.

JAMIE:

I think, I think art and irony makes me wanna throw up. I hate it. I've always hated it.

MARTIN:

So, so if it's not irony, it's, there is something different, like, for, in Xiu Xiu covering Kylie Minogue to Xiu Xiu covering Bikini Kill. Something else, something happens. But are you, is that something that you're busy with? Like-

JAMIE:

Really, I mean, I'm a big music fan, and since I was a kid, I've liked a lot of different kinds of music. For better or worse, my dad was a musician, and quite successful, but was very, very fussy about what music he allowed us to play in the house. And the era of music that when I was very young and growing up was pretty…My friends all listened to shitty hair metal pretty much, and he was not having it. There was just no way we could play it in the house. And so, I grew up listening to field recordings and classical music and Motown and Stax records and Talking Heads and PiL and things like that. So just from the, kinda the minute that music was presented to me as something that was important in life, the breadth of music was also made very, very clear to me.

In some ways, it was a drag not being able to hang out with my friends and listen to Mötley Crüe or even understand what that was. As a kid, I, you know, I was a little embarrassed that I didn't know what they were talking about. But as an adult, I'm extremely grateful that it, it was cemented very, very early on that there is a lot of different music and that music is not of an inherent quality. There is excellent music and there is shitty music, and life is short, so pursue excellent music while you can. So, for me, I mean, I like Kylie Minogue and I like Bikini Kill 'cause they're both great. They're great in different ways, but they're both great. You know, I don't see a massive difference between...I mean, there is aesthetically, obviously, and historically, and in, and in almost in every conceivable way, there's, there's differences between them. But just as a music fan, if you love it and it gives you something, then why else live?

MARTIN:

Yeah. And it's this, I like this idea that you can find excellent music wherever you find it. It's not like, you don't have to be a music snob to only look in one place for the thing that makes you feel like living another day.

JAMIE:

I mean, I think listening to excellent music makes you a music snob.

MARTIN:

Okay.

JAMIE:

But I mean, but that doesn't mean that liking Kylie Minogue, 'cause she has some incredible bangers, there's nothing un-snobby about liking something that's good. I think not paying attention to music and it's just on in the background, that makes you not a music snob, which is not a bad thing, it's just you're into other stuff in life. But I don't think that really appreciating, you know, super pop music makes you not a snob if you know what's good. I mean, there's plenty of super pop music that's fucking terrible. But a lot of it is excellent, you know? And separating the wheat from the chaff is what makes a, a music snob, not necessarily the source of that music or the genre, to me anyway.

MARTIN:

Yeah, and there's lots of kind of experimental music that's unintentionally tedious and doesn't deal with its own tedium.

JAMIE:

Oh, yeah. Oh, God ... Yeah, a more... Yeah. Yeah. Oh, geez Louise. We, um, Angela and I played at a very big experimental music festival earlier this year, and were just- ... roundly bored.

MARTIN:

Yeah, so I mean, I think it's quite clear from, from Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu, these are not songs that you're bored with. These are songs that somehow will survive, the attraction that you have to them will survive through the process of covering them and somehow something else will open up for you in, in that.

JAMIE:

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, and I mean, and it also, it doesn't necessarily reflect the entire breadth of music that we're interested in. I mean, it- Right it doesn't really make sense for us to do a Morton Feldman cover.

MARTIN:

No.

JAMIE:

And I am not technically capable of doing an Arthur Alexander cover, so there's a lot of stuff that we would like to do, but it doesn't seem appropriate, and there's stuff that I just am not a good enough musician to do.

MARTIN:

Yeah. I mean, I'd love to have a Xiu Xiu cover of Eliane Radigue, but maybe that's...

JAMIE:

We already kind of secretly cover Eliane Radigue all the time.

MARTIN:

Oh, yeah?

JAMIE:

We, we, yeah, we insert a lot of non-moving high-pitched drones into our music. Yeah. So, yeah.

MARTIN:

So, it's there, yeah. And do you have a different... I mean, I don't know, maybe methodology is not the word you would use, but do you have a... Like, when you approach these covers, do you have already a, a concept in mind, or do you have a kind of strategy? Or is it you just, you're in the studio and you're listening and you're seeing what comes out, like working covers?

JAMIE:

There's usually not a lot of thinking going on, mostly 'cause we do them at a pretty rapid clip. I mean, if we're doing a cover that ends up being on a record, we have several months to work on it, but these we usually just have a couple days to do. And it's not 'cause we're not devoted to them, it's just a different process. Most of the music we work on is incredibly pored over, and we will work on something for a year on and off at least. So, it's exciting to get to be able to work on something that we care about, but just do it quickly. I mean, I don't really like thinking about music that much. I just like to put my head down and burrow through the muck. For me, thinking too hard about something is kind of the enemy of expression.

MARTIN:

Right.

JAMIE:

And especially for something that we... like this. It's a real... It's sort of driven by id more than anything else. I mean, that's not an... I mean, I would like there to be true. I mean, it's impossible to make anything without thinking about it to a degree, but it's mostly just starting to play and seeing what, how it reveals itself.

MARTIN:

And is that also... 'Cause the other album that, that you've released this year, Butch Jenny, part of the way that you have written about that is that, that these are, are late night sessions. It seems like what you're interested in, in these tracks are, is also that certain kind of late night moment where maybe part of the ego or the superego has, has got a bit tired and has turned off, the critical voice is not screaming so loud, and then you make things quite quickly. Is that what Butch Jenny is also?

JAMIE:

Uh, yeah. I mean, to an even more insane degree. All right. I'm working on another Butch Jenny record right now, and it's always the last thing that I do after everything else is done, and I usually s- say, "You have 30 minutes to do this." The one goal with it is to make it s- horrible sounding. Um, and whatever, I get 30 minutes to put something together for that. I don't know if it's necessarily about... I would love to say it's about a total removal of the ego, 'cause that would make me feel cool, but- ... it's really, it's really just kind of about seeing what happens and more of a release. And I think I get very worried that what we're working on is going well. Music is what my entire life is about, so if I've had a shitty, unproductive day in the studio or feel like everything I've done is going badly, the Butch Jenny pursuit is very much about kind of cleansing the palate, doing something that is not about j- like you said, not about judgment, but just about stabbing myself in the ear with f- 400 melting ice picks or something. And j- I like music like that to, as a fan. So it's, God, I'd hate to use this word, but it's kind of fun, I guess. I don't think Xiu-it was fun, but Butch Jenny is more fun. And y- I mean, I don't think it's fun to listen to, but it's fun to make. Uh,

MARTIN:

I don't know. I mean, I, I listen to it partly also if I'm traveling. It's a good thing to listen to, to drown out other, less fun, less fun noises.

JAMIE:

Well, I mean, it's, for me, it's drowning out other feelings of insecurity.

MARTIN:

Right, right.

JAMIE:

So it's, it's drowning out something.

MARTIN:

Do you call Butch Jenny improvisation? Is that, is that how you would name it?

JAMIE:

Uh yeah. I mean, the, generally the process is I have a bunch of experimental synthesizers, and so far, I think Butch Jenny has just all been synthesizers unless I'm forgetting something. And I plug them together and there's some...But without thinking. So, I think probably the process of making the sound is fairly improvisatory. And then I usually just let it run, and so the synthesizers are kind of doing the improvising. By a certain amount of plugging them together, they'll react to each other in different ways. And there's not a lot of playing. There's usually making a sound, and then the sound goes and reacts to itself. So, yes and no.

MARTIN:

Cause I guess also there's no predetermined track limits. Like, you're not trying to make a pop song of three and a half minutes. Like, you, you, you're also trying-

JAMIE:

I just like, kind of, I mean, the idea is to keep it short but be...And but not in a ultra-specific way Actually, that is not true. I am super obsessed with... This is, I don't even know if I should go down this hole. I'm super obsessed with certain numbers. So as the track begins to play, it will almost, almost all of them, if you look at the lengths, will reflect a pattern- Like, I will know what the particular meaning of those lengths and numbers are.

MARTIN:

Mm-hmm.

JAMIE:

So, in that way the duration is predetermined by my own obsessive compulsions, but not based in the history of 45s having to be a certain length.

MARTIN:

That is actually super interesting because if I think of how each Xiu Xiu album changes from the previous or from the several previous, it seems like with each, like not with the Butch Jenny project, but with the Xiu Xiu main albums, you try and set up certain parameters. Like, sometimes it's the, I guess, with Women as Lovers that you're working with, in relationship to text or, you know, you're working with a very specific range of instruments. So, it seems like you are interested in this kind of tension in some ways between a certain kind of experimental improvisation or expressivity, but then quite a strict sense of form.

JAMIE:

I don't know if it's a tension as much as, as it is, it is a release. I mean, to me, the most wonderful thing about music is that it is completely endless. But because it is completely endless, it, it can be a little bit daunting. So having a predetermined form that will guide a record is... It-- You kind of give yourself a break almost.

You, you give yourself a map where if you didn't have a map before. But ac- actually, that's not something we started doing consciously until Angel Guts: Red Classroom, which was in 2014. So, with Women as Lovers, that may have existed, but it wasn't something we were doing on purpose. But since then, since 2014, each record before we start on it, we have a very clear idea about what the parameters for it are going to be.

MARTIN:

If I think about your, like, work outside of Xiu Xiu, both Butch Jenny, but then there was the other album, An Aggressive Chain-Smoking Alcoholic, but also the writing that you do, so the haiku and also the kind of awkward sex memoir. It seems again what you're do- I mean, definitely with haiku, and we, we've had someone else on the, a poet on the podcast, uh, Leo Boix, talk about, he wrote so many haikus during lockdown as a way to kind of really lean into quite a restricted structure because it was a way to manage the, the chaos that was happening around him. I'm interested, yeah, what's the attraction for you of the haiku form?

JAMIE:

Well, partially it's just in a way, and for reasons I cannot describe, as a low-key, unacademic, uneducated fan of poetry, I just like to read them. I couldn't tell you why I just like them. But, uh, also, I mean, in exploring them, it just comes a lot from writing lyrics, which some lyrics are in free time and some lyrics, because of the melody, have a very, very strict meter, so I just, there's a certain familiarity with them. And for no reason I can explain why, there's just, I think this is why everybody likes them. There's something about the directness and the brevity, but also the sort of mass of possible interpretations that they could have that's incredibly appealing. I like that it's very, very small, but could mean 10,000 different things. I mean, the author may have something very, very specific in mind, but good ones or real ones tend to be somewhat open-ended, or the last line takes a very distinct, unusual left turn if the person is doing a good one.

MARTIN:

Yeah, they feel like they have such a specificity, but actually that specificity is activated through the reader largely.

JAMIE:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

MARTIN:

I mean, obviously the writer has done a lot of work to put-- It's that word and, and it can't be any other word in that position. But it feels like what it's doing through its brevity is sort of opening up possibilities.

JAMIE:

The traditional kind of medieval and post-medieval era haiku writers had very, very specific rules that, that they dealt with, which a lot of modern haiku writers don't really follow, and I think unfortunately a lot of modern ones just seem like something you could read on the back of a bottle of kombucha or something. They, they don't have the, the depth, but... And I think part of the rules that they've, that they followed had to do with what you just described, like wanting to have it be very, very pointed and extraordinarily thoughtful. But how the reader reacted to that could, had as much to do with who the reader was as, as a person than what necessarily the author was trying to say. I don't know. The, the, the fact that s- that you could do something that massive in something that's so physically small is pretty extraordinary.

MARTIN:

I guess this is also in, in the covers that we've talked about, but there's something about working with a tradition to understand what's possible within it.

The project that I'm running in London, it's called the Rose Choreographic School, and one of the artists, Anjana, is a classically trained South Indian dancer, so Bharatanatyam, and she's quite critical of a certain Western perspective that thinks of experimentalism as breaking form, as sort of refusing or, you know,the kind of Western myth of the avant-garde. And it feels like across Xiu Xiu, you're interested... There are moments of, of breakage, but actually it's a lot where you're really thinking about certain kind of traditions that are handed to you or that you can pick up and then see what's possible within limits rather than kind of say, "Oh, we need to break all the limits. We need to push down boundaries." You're actually kind of saying, "Well, what are, what are the affordances of certain recognizable forms? Or if this is a pop song that has circulated, what happens if I take it and understand something about it through doing it rather than through destroying it?"

JAMIE:

I mean, you know, fundamentally we're music fans. And it, and hopefully eternal students of music. You know, I said this, it’s like, we just, when we talked about David Lynch, I mean, it's, it's really about exploring how a particular genre or piece of music or approach to music has made us who we are, and it feeds back upon itself. The visual art form I'm most interested right now is European medieval religious art, you know?

MARTIN:

Right.

JAMIE:

You just don't get a lot more, like, traditional or fundamental than that for a Western person. You know, and for those very reasons, where did we come from? Why are we like this? Why are we so fucking weird? And then, you know, I look at this and I'm like, "This is 20 million times weirder than the last 400 gallery shows that I went to." Things become a tradition for, not in every case, obviously, but things become a lasting tradition for good reasons, because they're excellent. It's kind of talking about crappy music and excellent music. It stays around; it stays part of our consciousness because it is superlative. And why else wouldn't you want to ingest what is superlative?

MARTIN:

Yeah.

JAMIE:

You know, and newness and innovation come from knowing that well. I mean, just the history of art is ‘be an excellent student, try to be an excellent student, likely you'll become an excellent master’. Not in every case, obviously, but largely. I mean, people who are great work hard, and part of working hard is doing your homework.

MARTIN:

And what is it for you to include in this-- 'Cause it feels like the, the cover versions that you do of Xiu Xiu tracks in the subscription series, they, they seem like you're going back into your own work to see what you can learn from it by revisiting it. Is it-- I mean, am I characterizing it strangely? But does that make sense? Like, there seems to be a reason for you treating your own catalogue as something you can still learn from.

JAMIE:

I don't think I'm that self-aware, I wish. I think I kinda just pick one!

MARTIN:

Okay, right!

JAMIE:

I am... A, a lot of them, the vast majority of them are songs I haven't listened to, in many cases, for more than a decade, and I'm, you know, I'm curious as to, sometimes, how little of it I remember, but then I'm also surprised at how…like, I'll hear it one time, and I'll go, "Oh, I know these lyrics. I haven't listened to these in 15 years," but they're in there.I think the solo versions on the, for the subscription is, it's probably the least amount of depth on my end as far as, I think when we did the subscription series, I asked around what were three things that people might find interesting, and some people recommended that. I'm sure that I learned something from them. I, oh, I take... Okay, there is one thing that I learned from them that, not for this last record we finished, but for the new one we just started, is I've, on, on a lot of the very, very, very early songs, we seem to be unafraid of having there be incredibly long silences, which, you know, uh, I mean, not like 20 minutes long, but for something that's kind of informed by pop music or indie rock or whatever the fuck, 30 seconds of silence is a very long time. So that's something that we're wanting to explore again on this next one, is having there be significantly less going on. That, it seemed to be something we were unafraid of before, so... You are right. So, I accidentally learned something- ... even though I was trying not to.

MARTIN:

I think also in relationship to the covers, you've done this whole series of drunk commentaries, which, I mean, maybe you don't listen back to them, I don't know. But, um, uh-

JAMIE:

Sometimes when I'm drunk, I listen back to them.

MARTIN:

Oh, really? I mean, they also seem like a way of revisiting... There are moments in those drunk commentaries where you kind of marvel at what you've done. Like, you're like, "Ah, this is actually really good." Maybe the track emerged at a particular moment in your life that you don't psychically go back there, but there's also something that, in the drunk commentaries, which is really very tender.

JAMIE:

I mean- I never, ever listen to Xiu Xiu songs unless we're gonna play them on tour and I need to learn them 'cause I forgot how they go or I'm doing this, this solo thing. So if I listen back to something and I'm surprised that it's, it's good, it's 'cause I haven't heard it in however, however long it's been. And also, that is never something in 100 million years I would ever say out loud unless I was totally blotto. So, I mean, I think because I don't listen to them and I don't really... Partially out of insecurity and partially out of thinking it's just a bad practice, I don't really explore stuff that we've done before, before we start doing something new.

I mean, I think to me, finishing something and immediately moving on to something else is, I find it personally to be productive. And I consciously, not consciously with intent, but I think the conscious part of my mind sort of forgets about it essentially, unless it's a song that we, you know, have continued to play on tour. So, I think any, any tenderness that comes across is, uh, maybe just sort of a, maybe like a small affection for not having given up in that moment or remembering clearly how awful something that was happening around the making of that song was and sort of being quietly proud that we didn't give up or something like that. And I don't know. I mean, it doesn't... Forgive me if this goes off the rails a little. Like, I don't really think that any... You know, music doesn't really come from the person who's making it. I mean, it comes from space or the goddess of music or the muse or just it's circumstance or luck or something. So, I mean, if I'm listening to something, I'm not relating to it strongly in a personal way like, "Oh, we, we made this happen, we did this." I think I'm probably, especially in that state if I'm super drunk, it's just kind of remembering that moment or remembering the circumstances around that and feeling certainly not a nostalgia or a wistfulness, but I don't know, just a, a connection to something, a connection to a moment that I had really very little to do with or that I just happened to be around and got to witness.

MARTIN:

Right. Yeah, that, that makes sense.

JAMIE:

You know, I've been at this for a long time, so if I'm listening to something that I made when I was significantly younger than I am now, like, I'm not that person anymore. I mean, like, physiologically I'm not that person. Psychologically I'm not that person, thank God. Um, it's, you know, but I’m rooting for that past self, and I'm still alive, so I clearly did things to perpetuate the existence of that past self, so- Yeah ... some, like, inner child BS or something.

MARTIN:

But it's a bizarre thing because I guess that version of yourself still circulates in the universe somehow, which is a very, I guess, out of all...I mean, I work most closely with dance and choreography, and it generally doesn't do that.

JAMIE:

Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it like that.

MARTIN:

You know, it's a-

JAMIE:

But that makes sense, yeah.

MARTIN:

So choreographers can't often go back and ac- I mean, they can maybe see a, a shitty video that's been shot from the corner of a studio, but it's not the work itself. It's a document, whereas with the albums, the album is the work itself. It's not a precursor to the live show. The live show is another kind of event. It does exist and circulate, so you can re-encounter yourself.

JAMIE:

That, yeah, that's, that's true. Oh, God.

MARTIN:

I mean, maybe, maybe here's another question I'm interested in is, is one of the other things that, that you've done, I think for, for a long time, is work in collaboration. I mean, Xiu Xiu itself is inherently collaborative, but then there's moments where, like Xiu Xiu Larsen or Sal Mineo or HEXA of Merzxiu. I'm probably missing some. Blue Water White Death?

JAMIE:

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's a deep cut.

MARTIN:

Yeah.

JAMIE:

You did your homework.

MARTIN:

So, what is it about collaboration both within Xiu Xiu and then when you name it as Xiu Xiu plus or, or Jamie plus somebody else? What, what draws you into these collaborative situations?

JAMIE:

I mean, every person that we collaborated with that you mentioned is one of my favourite musicians. When the opportunity to work with somebody who you admire is an extraordinary experience. They are all also people that I'm personally friends with, so it's fun to hang out with somebody that you would hang out with anyway. But then also get to do the thing that you both love to do above all else on earth. I mean, we haven't done a collaboration in a minute. It's probably time to, to do one again. It's extraordinarily rewarding and exciting part of life.

MARTIN:

But then I guess with, with Angela, it's the kind of longest collaboration within Xiu Xiu.

JAMIE:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the b- I... If, if Angela quits or dies, the band is done.

MARTIN:

Right. And then you -- I mean, 'cause I saw Angela also recently play in London.

JAMIE:

Oh, cool. Nice!

MARTIN:

Yeah, a solo piano show. So, it feels like there's things that you will do as Jamie that wouldn't fit with Xiu Xiu and obviously things that Angela can do.

JAMIE:

Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN:

Uh, is there something that you talk about, like what, what Xiu Xiu affords you that a solo practice can't?

JAMIE:

Not r- I mean, we don't, we don't really discuss it. No. I mean, we both help each other out. Like, later today, I'm going to the studio and help Angela mix her next solo record. I mean, I think 'cause we're friends and we count on each other as musical partners, even though it's something that I don't, other than helping or on a technical level, I don't have anything to do with musically, and frequently vice versa.

I mean, on this next record we work on, there's one song that has certain elements of…certain, like, distinct elements of Angela's solo practice on that particular Xiu Xiu song. And, uh, there's plenty of Xiu Xiu things that, you know, that elements of Butch Jenny fit into. I think the, sort of the, milieu of Xiu Xiu is pretty open-ended and fairly broad, whereas what Angela's solo work is, is very specific, and I think what Butch Jenny is, is very specific. I think it's just a desire to explore those specificities in more depth that wouldn't really work in Xiu Xiu. They'd probably lead us to it. But I don't think it was really all that, that conscious. I don't think it was like, "Oh, I don't get enough noise in my life." "I have to do this in Butch Jenny." It just seemed like something I wanted to pursue, and I don't…and I think you'd have to ask Angela what her motivation is.

MARTIN:

Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm asking for strategies, which is maybe not the way... I mean, I think a lot of artists don't work in that way. Like, they don't go in with a certain kind of strategic approach. It's through the doing that you discover what it is that you continue to be interested in.

JAMIE:

I would say that that's, for me, very much accurate.

MARTIN:

And is that the same for your writing practice? Haikus we've mentioned, but also, Anything That Moves obviously wasn't written in a very short- Well, I don't know! Maybe it was written in a short period, but it feels like it comes out of quite a long writing practice.

JAMIE:

That took, actually took a long time to get sorted out. They, so both of those things to me don't have any real relation to music at all, and it feels very, very, very different, and I don't think the pursuit feels or felt related. With Anything That Moves, which is partially true, partially conglomerated, partially completely fictional, real/fake memoir about sexual idiocy more or less, it was incredibly, incredibly formal. I mean, writing is not the same thing as music is. I mean, music is fundamentally physical. I mean, it’s many other things, but fundamentally it requires your body to make it happen. Whereas, you know, writing requires your brain and your fingers. I was surprised at how different it felt, and I was also very surprised by, with records, the kind of necessarily means to continue to survive aspect of it for me has to do with kind of recontextualizing largely, not in every case, but in many cases, largely recontextualizing something awful that has happened that otherwise I wouldn't really be able to process emotionally and would lead me to do something very destructive, to turn that into something constructive or turn that into something...I don't know, I guess constructive is the opposite of destructive. And afterwards, I don't feel freed from that moment, but I feel as if it has been turned into something else and I can deal with it now. It's been put somewhere. It's been moved from one part of my existence to another part of my existence, but it is not gone., it's just it's recontextualized.

MARTIN:

Right.

JAMIE:

It's not purgative or what's the other word?

MARTIN:

Cathartic.

JAMIE:

Cathartic, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's not necessarily cathartic. It's much, really much more psychologically and emotionally functional. Where I was very, very, very surprised after I finished writing Anything That Moves, which a lot, I mean, it's supposed to mostly be funny, but most of the funny things in it are, were pretty, totally mortifying or physically horrible things that happened. But I was hoping it would come across as funny, and they were all things that were very present in my mind. And once that book was finished, it was completely cathartic. They don't bother me anymore largely, or I don't think about them anymore, which I did not expect to have 'cause that's not the experience I've had with music at all. And it may be because it is a much more, you know, intellectual process, but I'm not sure. It was a totally different process making them, and a completely and totally different result afterwards. I think also 'cause with music, I mean, it, it gets revisited. There's songs that we wrote in 2002 that we still play. I think if I had to read this book 100 days a year while I was on tour or something like that, I might not feel quite so, quite so purged.

MARTIN:

And as you say, there's a humour as you move through stories, and I mean, not humour in a sort of laugh out loud necessarily. I think it makes me think of this tension around what you've said around catharsis, because in some ways, somebody new to Xiu Xiu could pick up one of the…or play, press play on one of the records and be startled by a certain kind of emotional disclosure.

But actually, it's less even the music, and I would say my experience of both listening to the music and reading the book is that, of course, it comes out of autobiography. Of course, it comes out of very personal experiences. But the aim is not, you're not the hero of either the music or the writing. You're kind of more like a channel through which this is passing. It's very specific. There are details of your life, but it doesn't seem like my job is to centre you and your experience when I listen to the music. You know, it makes me think about awkwardness and cringe experiences I've had in my life when I read the book. So, it's more like an invitation into certain kind of emotional or affective states than it is heroic stories.

JAMIE:

Well, I appreciate that you... It comes across that way too, 'cause that's certainly the intent. I mean, that book is, I did not want the publisher to refer to it as a memoir, but they said that's, they kind of had to 'cause that's sort of how things are organized.

MARTIN:

Yeah.

JAMIE:

'Cause it's exactly like you said, although aside from the stuff in it that's made up, I mean, it's about things that happened to me as a person, but, that it's me, is irrelevant. There, it's supposed to be about things that happened. It's not about me.

MARTIN:

Right.

JAMIE:

Even though it's functionally things that happened to me. And similarly with the records, when I was a younger person and I started getting serious about music, you know, as I mentioned, my dad was a musician, and he asked me flat out, "Okay, why do you wanna do this?" And I had, and I had no idea. I didn't have a good answer. I had no answer. And, you know, I just sort of sat there looking kind of dumbstruck, and he said, "The reason you wanna do this is to try to touch somebody who might listen to it." And I'm very glad that I heard that as a teenager because the motivation for doing something is to try to make something that somebody else will get something out of. There's many motivations for doing it, but that's one of the motivations for doing it. I think because of that, hopefully because of that attempt at that fundamentality in it, it doesn't come across as, "Look at me, look at me, look at me," but more what can somebody find in it for themselves, hopefully.

Although I work very, very hard on the lyrics and they mean something specific to me, it is of no consequence to me whatsoever if somebody interprets them in the way that I interpret them. I really want them to find what it is for them that could potentially be meaningful, not for any high-handed kind of Dalai Lama-esque reasons, but just, like I've said 100 times in this conversation already, I mean, music is incredibly meaningful to me, and getting to participate in the continuum of that meaning is what keeps me trying to do it. It's not about trying to put myself forward in the world.

MARTIN:

Yeah, no,

JAMIE:

I think- So I'm, I'm, I'm- Yeah ... very, very glad that that comes across.

MARTIN:

Yeah, I mean for me, definitely there's... Even if I just think of the three albums that we spoke about that have come out this year, Eraserhead Xiu Xiu', Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu, and the Butch Jenny record, then they don't seem to be about consolidating ego. They do seem to be about this question of-

JAMIE:

Well, my ego finds that very satisfying. Thank you, Martin.

MARTIN:

Well, I'm glad, but, I mean, I think that that's probably also why I don't wanna speak for them, but why Mine thought about inviting you in relationship to the apocalypse, because it really is that question of, “Okay, I can't do very much, but there are some things that I can do, and one is seek out that somehow. It doesn't necessarily always make me feel better. It's not about kind of distracting me or promising that life will be really good if I just listen to this record”. I don't think that's what Xiu Xiu is promising, but it is to say, like, there is something that we can do, that we can somehow, with all the shit that we're handed, we can polish a turd once in a while.

JAMIE:

Yes. I mean, as a fan, yes. That is what we can do.

MARTIN:

Yeah. We always ask guests to donate a word to the glossary, and you've already done that, which is BORG, I think you just sent in. So, we'll put that in. And it's this expanding glossary of terms that people are using to talk about choreography, which I'm really happy that BORG will be in the,

JAMIE:

Okay, and you know it's not the… I forgot I did that. And you know it's not the Star Trek Borg, right?

MARTIN:

No, I know. It’s an acronym, right? It stands for-

JAMIE:

It's an acronym. Yeah, yeah. It means a lot of stuff. It's essentially, like, bottle of rage glue or goo or-

MARTIN:

Ah, yeah.

JAMIE:

Yeah ... it's, it's just, it's something that teenagers in places that life sucks tend to drink in order to try to get through the day.

MARTIN:

Perfect. Okay. That, that, that's gonna go in our glossary then. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much, Jamie. Thanks for your time.

JAMIE:

Oh, thank you. Martin, it's really nice to talk to you. Thank you all so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

MINE:

Thank you for listening. And because this is our final episode, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has been part of the series. All of the artists, thinkers who have so generously shared their practices, voices, questions, and time with us. The series has become a way for me to think alongside others about what it means to live through the worlds that are continually ending and about the queer, trans, sonic, bodily, and collective practices through which we might still imagine otherwise. I especially want to thank Izzy Galbraith, Martin Hargreaves, and Hester Cant for all of their support throughout this process and for trusting me with the space to shape the series. I'm incredibly grateful that you gave me the freedom to experiment, listen, wonder, and let these conversations become what they needed to become. And finally, thank you to Jamie and Martin for bringing the series to a close, or perhaps not quite a close. Maybe another passage, another ending that opens somewhere else.

MARTIN:

For the transcript of this episode and for resources mentioned in the conversation, go to rosechoreographicschool.com/podcast. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description wherever you're listening right now.

If you'd like to get in touch with us, email us on info@rosechoreographicschool.com. This podcast series is a Rose Choreographic School production. The series is produced and edited by Hester Cant, curated by Mine Kaplangı, with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith. Thank you for listening.

Goodbye.

Bibliography:

Xiu Xiu, Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart’s work:

Xiu Xiu: Website and Instagram
Eraserhead Xiu Xiu
Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu
HEXA
Subscription
Butch Jenny
Women As Lovers
Angel Guts: Red Classroom
Angela Seo
An Aggressive Chain-Smoking Alcoholic
A Neo Tropical Companion
Anything That Moves
Drunk Commentary
XXL (Xiu Xiu Larsen)
Merzxiu
Blue Water White Death

Other work mentioned:
David Lynch’s Eraserhead
Oxana Timofeeva
Twin Peaks
David Lynch
Prince
David Bowie
Scott Walker
Florian Schneider
Bob Dylan
Throbbing Gristle
Kylie Minogue
Bikini Kill
Nancy Sinatra
Diamanda Galas
Motown
Stax
Talking Heads
PiL
Motley Crüe
Morton Feldman
Arthur Alexander
Eliane Radigue
Anjana Bala
Leo Boix