Panic Attack! - Jamie T

This hack always convinced himself that there was a fine art to the mixtape, elevating my obsession with the perfect pacing, title and tracklisting to the level of a Rothko mural or, for a more contemporary example, ‘Borat’. Never before has ninety-minutes of plastic been responsible for so many hushed indie romances, failed bands and the wilful flaunting of obscurity. Truth is, there’s a genius to the perfect C90 compilation: just ask Jamie T.

“Keep it diverse, keep it happy,” he begins. “Well, not happy necessarily, but keep it on whatever vibe you’re on when you’re making it. Don’t feel afraid to indulge in your vibe (at this point Jamie T gives the impression of someone going mad. He reminds us of Paul Kaye). Don’t think about it too much!” Remember, a mixtape is just NOT the same on CD. “If it’s on tape as well kids who are listening to it are gonna be like ‘**** it, I wanna buy that!’ y’know? You can’t rip it off the tape. Well, a lot of kids don’t know how to do that, so they won’t”

Waiting for Jamie T to finish a video interview, Gigwise is sitting bored in the canteen of Virgin Records. Box-fresh PR types are walking around as we sit and stare at the sign ‘Don’t open this window. It’s faulty and will fall off’. It’s a further one hour later, during which we watch the head**** of a video for his new single ‘Calm Down Dearest’ (which locates the midpoint between ‘Trainspotting’s drug scenes and that creepy dwarf in ‘Don’t Look Now’), and sit in the office of an absent MD wondering whether bags will be searched on the way out, before Jamie T bounds in. A vision in vintage Nike, inevitably holding a can of Kronenberg (his first of the day), he has not only come to rule the British music scene in 2007, but to rescue this writer from a miserable Thursday afternoon (that night’s Babyshambles gig excepted).

BANQUET RECORDS: Have you got any more copies of your E.P?
JAMIE T: No.
BANQUET RECORDS: Well, we’ve sold out.
JAMIE T: (incredulously) What?!
BANQUET RECORDS: It’s sold out.
JAMIE T: (pause) Oh.

That’s the moment Jamie T first realised that things were about to run out of his control. Having been making warm, ramshackle recordings in his bedroom for as long as he could remember, he decided that he “had a few tracks that I wanted to know what people thought of, and thought I’d put them out…” The resultant release was the ‘Selfish Sons’ EP. Word of its release spread like wildfire, and soon Jamie T was being confronted at gigs with crowds singing back words to songs that were still very much unreleased, and confused hacks wondering just what the T stands for (it’s Treays, which Jamie’s mum reliably informs him is French).

He was once part of a London scene that also included the likes of Mystery Jets and Larrikin Love. It was a scene in that all the bands were friends and played together, but as Jamie T tells me “by the time it all got brought up in the NME and shit like that it had all pretty much died. It’s just that scenes die once bands get a little bit bigger because we all had to then go off and tour”. There’s a faint trace of regret in Jamie T’s voice that whatever happens now it’ll always be hard to go back to how it was, especially as his January debut ‘Panic Prevention’ promises to be a fine little record, with a kaleidoscopic musical vision that belies the creator’s meagre 20 years. There’s ska, punk, electro, and lamenting acoustics in amongst Jamie’s hyperactive cockney drawl; just don’t utter the word ‘genre’.

“I think it’s silly,” laughs Jamie, clicking a ballpoint repeatedly. “Who’s that calculated? I’m into a lot of different types of music and I’m just kind of…I’m not pretending that they’re mine, that I came up with this kind of thing. I just like all these different types of music. Suddenly: ‘Oh! I’m mixing genres, and trying something really daring and new!’” There’s a pause. “No, people have been doing it for ****ing years!” Of the album itself he says: “I’m excited about it, just to kind of hear what people think. But at the same time I’ve washed my hands of it really, to be honest. Done and dusted. I’m still sitting in the studio, writing constantly”