The xx - Crystalised

Introduction

0:00You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirwe.

0:10I'm going to be on tour for the next few weeks, and all the dates are at songexploder.net slash live. I'm going to be playing songs from my new album, In the Last Hour of Light, with a full band, and I'm going to be talking about the making of my album with a special guest moderator in each city. I get to be the interviewee instead of the interviewer. So I'm going to be joined by Jason Manzoukas, Samin Nosrat, Allison Russell, Joshua Molina, Ken Jennings and John Roderick, Min Jin Lee, and Adam Scott. It's a really personal album, and I hope you can make it out to one of the shows.

0:41You can get tickets and more info at songexploder.net slash live.

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The XX Formation

1:46The XX formed in 2005, when they were still in high school. They signed to the UK label Young and put out their first album in 2009. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize and was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and more. And since then, The Guardian has named it one of the best albums of the 21st century. This year, the three band members, Rami Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie XX, played together as the XX for the first time in eight years.

2:18I spoke to them in between the weekends at Coachella, where they were opening their sets with the song Crystallized. It's the first song that they ever released, back in April 2009, when the lineup also included Baria Koreshi on guitar.

Meeting and Influences

2:31I spoke to Rami, Jamie, and Oliver here at my studio about how they first found each other and how they made Crystallized. I'm Jamie, I'm the producer, and I do all the electronic stuff on stage. I'm Rami, and I play guitar, and I'm one of the songwriters, and I sing.

3:05And I'm Oliver, I play bass, I sing, and I'm the other songwriter.

3:13Oliver and I met in nursery school when we were three. And then we met Jamie when we were 11, the first day of school. I didn't know anybody else that came from my previous school, so I was on the hunt for some friends quickly. And I gravitated towards these two quite instantly. I just felt like some kind of similarity, like a strangeness, probably, that I felt similar to.

3:44This is wonderful, fascinating to hear this now. Jamie and I used to go skateboarding together, and we used to watch a lot of skate videos together and discovered a lot of amazing music. There was a video that Jamie showed me that had Portishead and Mazzy Star and The Cure. I think that was actually an amazing way of discovering music. And then my uncles were DJs, so I inherited my decks when I was 10 years old, playing records, playing my parents' records. And then I learned about the sampling of those records and all of that.

4:17We didn't really start making music together. Like, we started independently. Jamie was making his solo music. Rami was making hers. I was making mine. It was just such a private, personal exploration, connecting with music. It was such, like, a shy... I remember a moment of us sitting together, and I was like, I like singing. And you were like, I like singing.

4:42Then Oliver and I were kind of trying to, along with Baria, who was also in the band at the time, trying to, like, find a way to play live. We were gigging me, Rami, and Baria for quite a while. So, for a period of time, I was watching these guys do it, and going to the gigs. Yeah, we begged Jamie. We said, please play drums in the band. Please play live drums, because we thought he was a great drummer. I didn't really know what to do, because I didn't want to play drums on it, because it sounded so good as it was. It wouldn't have worked, because these guys were a lot quieter than they are now.

5:17You just wouldn't have been able to hear what was going on on stage if there was a live drum kit. That was one of my main things that was stopping me from doing that. I'm really glad that Jamie said no at first, because it kind of forced Oliver and I to, we figured out a way to make electronic drums, simplistic ones, first. And I think because of the limitations, I mean, a lot of everything we'll say has probably come from limitations. You know, Oliver and I were, like, writing two electronic drums from the 8-track that I had. It had, like, drum beats in it, so we sort of would use those.

5:49Or I remember making some really simple drum beats on, like, a weird program on my computer. Yeah, I remember that. What is that program? It's called, like, Hammerhead or something? Yeah. Very basic drum machine. I really remember that. And then just, we had that, burnt it on a CD, and then we gave it to the sound person and said, like, it had to be, like, track three. And it would go, like, one, two, three. And eventually, we said to Jamie, please, can you, like, help us and make some beats? So you made some beats, and then eventually... Eventually, I went on stage and started playing the MPC. Having Jamie play the MPC live in the band was a very big turning point of the fluidity of it being live, feeling, but still electronic.

6:25And MPC is a music production center, that's what it stands for, and it's actually meant for making full tracks on them, usually hip-hop. But I never did that, because I always just wanted to use it as a live tool, playing it live, tapping the buttons.

Writing Crystallized

6:50I think when we started writing Crystallized, we only had about four songs. You know, we were playing pub sets for about 20 to 25 minutes, and Jamie had just joined the band. I remember the very, like, earliest demo was Romy and I playing two acoustic guitars.

7:20It was in front of the program on... Photo booth. Photo booth. The most roundabout way to go. It worked, though. We'd, like, filmed ourselves, there was the video, and then you could extract the audio.

7:42At that point, songs very much started as, like, words on a piece of paper. We sort of used to share lyrics back and forth, like poems. I remember my first lyric was inspired by something my mum read in a paper about how you can have your ashes compressed so hard that they are turned into diamonds, which is really macabre, but that was the first lyric. You've applied the pressure to have me crystallized. You've applied the pressure to have me crystallized.

8:20And you've got the faith that I could bring paradise. Those first lines of crystallized, you know, I thought they were so visual and really unique, but then I think I sort of reacted. Then I'm sort of, in my second verse, trying to write something that has got a similar pattern and wanted to use an interesting word, like, crystallizer. There's, like, paralyzed and, you know, other words that are kind of bouncing off what Oliver had said.

8:51Mine and Rommie's writing was very much like a patchwork rather than, like, sat in the room together. But so many of the songs from the outside must really sound like we're singing together, you know,

9:23two parts of a love song sang at each other. You know, Rommie and I being best friends and not only that, both being gay. You know, it's not directed at one another. It was kind of making each other's perspectives kind of just hoping they would fit. Sort of a shared space, both individually saying our perspectives on it, but never really asking, like, ooh, what's that about for you necessarily? Just reacting to each other's lyrics.

9:54Then you could sort of, like, create things and then send it back and forth between each other, have that distance from each other, but the closeness. Yeah, that autonomy to be able to make things separately was a big thing for me. And the way Oliver and I sing together kind of comes from a place of, like, oh, you go first, no, you go first. So then we sing together. So don't think that I'm pushing you away When you're the one that I've kept closest The first time I really remember was us trying to figure out what the song was

10:25and how to play it live, probably for that weekend's show. I was also trying to figure out my new toy, which was an MPC, and plugged a microphone into it and got Oliver to sing like an ooh, just a note, just to see how it worked, and then recorded it into the machine and started messing with the pitch live, and that became the intro of Crystallized. So that sound is still that same sound from that first day of just trying to work out Crystallized.

11:00It really feels like it's such a deep dive into memory to remember the creation of this song. I know that in terms of my personal connection with playing the guitar, I've never really been that interested in, like, full chords. I've really loved, like, melodic guitar.

11:22But wanting to be able to sing confidently and play the guitar, there was a simplicity to the instrumentation of it, because a lot of what we wanted to put on the album was exactly what we could play live. And I wouldn't feel confident to play that full intro riff and sing. I had to be, like, moved to just running single notes. You don't move slow I'm taking steps in my direction This Amazon's echo

11:54Does it lessen your affection My conversation with the XX continues after this. Song Exploder is sponsored by the game Mixtape. And to learn more, I talked to one of the creators. My name is Johnny Galvatron. I'm the writer and director of Mixtape. It's about three teenagers on their last day of high school going to their final party together,

12:24listening to the greatest mixtape of all time. And where did the idea for this game originally come from? Just wanting to make a game based around That's Good by Devo, which is the greatest song of all time. There's just something alive in that song that speaks to me. And it's very much a game about being a music lover and someone who appreciates music and knows where to place it in their life. And then game-wise, there are different kinds of mechanics, there's different kinds of music, there's different kind of art style. So the game as a whole should be viewed as a mixtape and kind of this artistry of arrangement.

12:58And so how is the game itself like a mixtape? So usually in a video game, you will have a standard set of mechanics, which might be fighting. But in a mixtape, there's different people saying different things with different vibes. And you want each song to be given its own experience, its own life. And you want to use the medium. That's what's kind of important about making video games. You want to use the medium to show what the music is showing. We have this song, BJ Thomas, most of all, where a friend gets betrayed and she floats back through town and just kind of knocks everything out of her way as she floats through town and you control her.

13:35And like, what a beautiful way to kind of use that song and to use a mechanic and input to show the betrayal and the despondency and the sadness. And when you can get all those things mixed together and hit those crescendos where you hit between video game, music, narrative, that's the goal, that's the diamond that you aim for. I think you would really dig it. Mixtape comes out May 7th on console and PC. Check it out at mixtape.game.

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Recording Crystallized

16:06When it came time to record this song, we'd actually done a few different versions with different producers. Like our label and management had set us up on like different speed dates. Like we'd done a version of the song with Diplo, who is the most exciting person ever to us. And I think we'd done another version with a producer called Lex, but it wasn't quite right. Because I think, you know, the space in the music often ended up being filled by that person's like sound and their signature.

16:42Especially because we were all so young, we didn't really, you know, know what we were doing. But it felt like we were just, you know, handed over to these different people. We all just really loved the sound of the demos. They just had like our feeling of the live show. And we were just like, we'd hear some of the versions back and be like, oh, we just like how the demo sounded before. And then you kind of get people saying, oh, but this is, you should work with them because, you know, they've done this. And I think we were all just quite like, oh, we don't really bothered about that.

17:13We just want it to sound like us. It was really useful to have gone through all that and hear all the different ways that things could be filled out. And I was learning a lot at the same time. But definitely the back of my head, I was like, I could do this. We didn't think it was an option for Jamie to produce until we had worked with other people. And then XL employed Roddy MacDonald to be the engineer at their new studio, which was just in the garage of the headquarters of XL.

17:44And that sort of opened the door to the possibility of maybe me being able to do it because he had all of the engineering skills. It kind of gave me the opportunity to try and prove myself. And I remember feeling excited at the idea of Jamie doing it because I knew he would keep it sounding like us. Everything was so exciting. We had this space for free. We'd worked out how to do all these songs structurally because we played them live so much.

18:15It was the MPC stuff first so that the groove was right to record the guitars over. And I just literally played it in like I would in the band.

18:30So I was playing it live, just do the whole thing in one go.

18:36We were all talking about rumble drums, which is a term I think we just made up. Yeah. From listening to a few different bits of music. It's those tumbling, rumbling drums. I remember you like tapping on a table to kind of like get the idea across. I was working out how to make electronic production feel live and feel organic. Trying to work out how to make every click, every rim sound slightly different like it would if you were just hitting a snare.

19:11So it was like painstaking. And I play on the guitar. And then Baria plays the second guitar part.

19:20And then Oliver joins with the bass. It's interesting to me how sparse the verses are. There is just always a part of me that winces when I listen back to that because I almost don't recognize that person.

19:51It has an element of like finding like an old diary from being a teenager. You know, that is not how I sound today. When we recorded that, I was 18 and I'm 36 now. So I'm 18 years later. Wow.

20:10When we were kids, their voices sounded, if you were to pitch one up or one down, they would sound exactly the same. I like to think that we learned to speak at a similar time. You know, we grew up together learning. So I like to think it's kind of interwoven with that, that we sing in a similar way. So don't think that I'm pushing you away. When you're the one that I've kept closest. Hi, hi, hi.

20:39Hi, hi, hi. I feel like that's a melody that Oliver brought to the song. There's quite a lot of that. And I realized in our first album, I don't know what it is. It might have just been that those are the moments where you play the more complicated guitar parts. So you can do the words at the same time. Quite possibly, yes.

21:06I kind of love the playfulness of it just being a free melody that like doesn't have words and people can sort of sing along with it. And that particular time I was really obsessed with not using any pre-made sounds. So every sound is sampled and layered from records that I owned. And that was just fun for me.

21:28In theory, I think we've talked about doing the vocals at the same time, but I don't know if we actually, you know, I remember being a conversation of it being like a nice idea that we've sort of recorded everything in live. I think that was aspirational because it had been written live, but I don't think we ended up doing that in the end. Oh, let me play you Oliver's vocal stem because you can hear Rami singing in the background, being picked up by his mic and vice versa. Oh, so we did sing it at the same time.

22:02Oh, there you go. Oh, that's, that's a nice discovery. Nice. Thank you for showing us this. There's a part towards the end of the song where we sing our individual parts that are different over each other.

22:32Singing our pre-choruses. Mine is things have gotten closer to the sun and I've done things in small doses. So don't think that I'm pushing you away when you're the one that I've kept closest. And mine is glaciers have melted to the sea. I wish the tide would take me over. I've been down on my knees and you just keep on getting closer. It's still now one of my favourite parts and like we've just performed it, but I have to like block him out completely in my mind and just sing my part.

23:20And not try and think about what you're saying because I'll start seeing your part. But that I kind of look back on fondly. It's like, that's an interesting decision that we did that. And I love it now. But do you remember why we did that? You know, in hindsight, the song to me is the avoidant and the anxious. And, you know, that moment feels like a moment of like conflict with the resolution of coming back together and singing in unison. The person in the relationship that feels scared of intimacy takes, you know, a step back.

23:55And then the other person in the relationship who feels scared by that step back takes a step forward. And that kind of like cat and mouse chase, which is all too frequent because I think those two characters often attract one another. And without, you know, getting too therapy and personal, you know, I definitely relate to that anxious role. And, yeah, I kind of see very much this song as like a tale of those two characters, but with a resolution and a compromise of, you know, that final refrain of just go slow.

24:37You know, it's not that I am not in this. It's not that I don't care, but you're going to have to match my kind of speed and how we do this relationship. This album to me is peering into other people's relationships and building my own expectations and my own fantasies and excitement about it. I felt such an embarrassment that I hadn't been in love.

25:12Like it made the songs less honest or less vulnerable, but it was still such a personal thing for me to share my kind of like fantasies and my feelings. I think Romy grew up a lot faster than I did. And, you know, you were writing from more of a place of experience, I think. I have always been drawn to romance and the euphoria of that and the heartache of that.

25:44And I think that I was writing from some experience at this time, still very early, early love and lust and longing. But I think we definitely spoke about it not being so specific without time, place or gender. I think this song for me feels very open to interpretation, which I love.

26:10We've all grown up together literally from a young age and throughout this band and throughout this process. And I feel very nostalgic hearing this song again. And it's really lovely to be able to talk about it. You know, we've been relearning how to play all this old music and going into the projects and the stems and like reconnecting with the decisions we were making then. And I've actually really enjoyed that as we are working on a new album to just reconnect with those decisions and that sort of naivety and the simplicity of that time.

26:40And I think it's nice to learn from ourselves again. And when you say it's half our life, okay, that temperate does bring up. I can't believe it's been that long and I'm so grateful to be able to still play this music.

Full Song Playback

27:05And now, here's Crystallized by the XX in its entirety.

27:13Crystallized by the XX in its entirety. guitar solo

27:44To apply pressure To help me crystallize And you've got the faith That I could bring paradise I'll forgive and forget Before I'm paralyzed Do I have to keep up the pace To keep you satisfied

28:14Hi-yi Things have gotten closer to the sun And I've done this In small losses So don't think That I'm pushing you away When you're the one That I've kept closest Hi-yi-yi

28:34Hi-yi-yi

28:38Hi-yi-yi

28:42Hi-yi-yi You don't move slow I'm taking steps in my direction The sun sounds echo Does it lessen your affection? You say I'm foolish For pushing this side But I'm not alone

29:12But I wanna be alive Hi-yi-yi I see as I'm melting to the sea I wish the tide would take me over I've been down on my alleys And you just keep on getting closer Hi-yi-yi Hi-yi-yi Hi-yi-yi Hi-yi-yi Hi-yi-yi

29:42Hi-yi-yi Hi-yi-yi Plastic eyes and glucidosis to the sea And I've done this In small losses So don't think That I'm pushing you all week And you just keep on getting closer Go also Go also Go slow

30:14Go slow Go slow Visit songexploder.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream Crystallized, and you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit.

30:46The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishikesh Hiraway. Thanks for listening.

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