Words by Laura Martin
Photos by Sanna Charles

Is it too early to call a song of the summer? Because it’s highly likely James Yuill‘s “On Your Own” could well be it. The perfect mix of electronic musings, high on synth and with heartfelt lyrics is a neat calling card for his second album, Movement In A Storm (Moshi Moshi, 2010). James’ lovelorn voice shone out on his biggest hit so far, “This Sweet Love” in 2008, a delicate track fusing Balearic guitar with a sprinkling of electro, making it the all-back-to-mine anthem for that season.

If his first album Turning Down Water For Air was about being a “sulky teenager and growing up”, then his second album is mid-twenties and hitting the nightlife scene hard. He played an intimate mid-week gig at Hoxton Bar and Grill previewing his new material and some of his heavy beats had us checking around to make sure we hadn’t been transported to Fabric, 3 AM instead. We caught up with James in Dalston a few days later where he chatted to us about his evolution from “folktronica” to dance, the trouble with his middle name and why Ke$ha needs that dollar bill smacked out of her name.

Is is nice to finally shake off the folktronica label?
Yeah that would be nice, because I’m not really that folky. I’ve always said that Folktronica can mean a term for mixing something organic with something electronic. It first started being used with Fourtet, but he’s not really that folky so I think it’s more of that organic sound he uses with Efterklang, using those organic bits mixed with modern production and that sort of thing. I think that’s really the sort of thing people mean. To be honest, Folktronica’s not a very nice word.

What about your newest label then, “Electro-miserablist”?
I quite like that one! It really sums it up. I’m glad folk isn’t in there I mean it’s quite a big part, but folk sums up trad folk and like weird prancing around in dresses so I’m glad it’s got electro in there.

Miserabalist seems a bit weird, I actually find your songs pretty uplifting. Are you a miserabilist?
Well, not me personally [laughs]. I’m quite an upbeat person but my songs are quite melancholic, I don’t know why. I tend to default to unhappy times, imagining bad things. I don’t know, I just can’t seem to write in a major key or anything too happy. I’ve tried, like when it starts off with a positive lyric and it already goes to really negative.

A lot of songwriters find it easier to go to the dark side and write about those emotions instead.
Well they do say frustration leads to the best creative stuff.

What frustrates you then? Or what inspires you to write?
With this album, it was more logical. The first album songwriting was drawing on growing up and being a sulky teenager so I used a lot of that. This album was an experiment to write about other things and to try and not make it sound so relationship based, as I’m in a happy relationship and have been for four years, so I can’t really say that’s it what about. The only song I really sat down to try and write about something in particular was “First In Line” and it’s quite obvious I’ve done that as it’s a really simple story, no hidden meanings or anything.

Your new album’s definitely more dancey – was this a specific approach you took? Yeah definitely, because I played quite a lot last year you definitely know which ones will work live and which ones you will enjoy playing. In last year’s set I had a track which was just a random electronic track, it wasn’t on any of the albums. It was just a track I did live and I thought it would be great to have something like that in the set that was an actual song so I wrote “My Fears” deliberately so that it had an elongated ending because I knew that it would be fun to play. I think also what I was listening to, I really wanted to try and have all the genres spanned if I can think of a non-wanky way of saying that…

..spectrum?
Yeah, spectrum.

It’s interesting how your music bridges that gap between intelligent electro into hands-in-the-air dance. At your show last week in Hoxton, some city boys wandered in and thought they were back in Ibiza or something.
I quite like that. On the album I deliberately put an instrumental acoustic track after “My Fears” because I like the juxtaposition. Live, sometimes it doesn’t work, I played recently and played “Foreign Shores” just after a really heavy track and the crowd don’t really want to hear that. I think if I’m playing a full gig, people are prepared to hear the whole range, but if I’m doing a club show and they don’t really know who I am then it’s best to drop the acoustic ones.

Is it hard spanning the different musical worlds?
Yeah, but I’ve always had that though. When I started out, I was doing quite a dancey set but in singer-songwriter nights. I’d turn up and soundcheck the laptop and it would sound really pathetic. But it’s getting better. It’s just the one-off shows where people don’t know what to expect that they get a bit confused.

You’ve been getting a lot of airplay for your current track “On Your Own”, it seems the perfect “crossover” track for you. Is it your aim to break the mainstream?
It would be nice! But you get to a certain stage and you know not to expect it, it’s just sometimes unachieveable unless they take a real liking to you. I heard a crazy thing that last year the controller of Radio 1 was asked with a number of other people what his favourite track was from last year and he said “No Surprise” from me, so if he likes it and I still can’t get played on mainstream radio…then I’ve learnt not to pursue that.

Perhaps you need to cosy up to Fearne Cotton or something.
Exactly. I’m not quite sure how that would happen.

I read an interview with you at the beginning of last year where you were asked where you saw the music scene headed and you quite rightly said you saw more mainstream artists going electro. Since then you’ve been bang on with the likes of Lady GaGa, La Roux, Little Boots etc emerging. What does your crystal ball say next?
[Laughs] Well, I didn’t really predict it as it was already beginning to happen. I remember thinking that mainstream music would get a lot more complicated and I thought that – and still think – that the future will be Kylie Minogue doing electro songs, but in ¾ or a random time signature. Like, “Hey Ya” is in a weird time signature, and people try and do things differently so it’s only a matter of time before there’s a number one in a time signature. But Kylie did really embrace the electro scene, and so did Kelis actually.

Kylie’s newest song just sounds like a mash up of all the other poppy electro tracks put together
Or, if I can mention a dirty word, Ke$ha. It’s just another example of mainstream copying what’s going on in other scenes.

Urgh, like how she totally ripped off Uffie.
It’s horrific! I even cut up some of Uffie’s tracks and some of Ke$ha’s tracks and the words and even phrases she uses are the same. I actually thought it was Uffie when I first heard it, I thought she had collaborated. I thought “Oh, that’s good, she’s getting a bit of exposure”, then it was like “Oh, someone’s just stolen her song.”

Your background is in finding music to soundtrack adverts – what was the best example of what you did, and the worst example of what you did?
Well the worst example is DFS [a sofa company]. We just to work like bitches on that account. You’d have to send over so many tracks. The brief would be something like “upbeat but not too quirky”, yeah, thanks. So we ended up pitching so much stuff to them. I think I was quite pleased with a couple of the M&S ones we did for their fashion stuff, they had specific briefs like something English, ’70s, male singer – it was quite difficult, but we put a band called Sailor and “Glass Of Champagne” on. We were searching for literally months for that song and I’m quite pleased with that work.

Did you enjoy doing that job?
Yeah it was great fun the only problem were the clients. I worked with great people, got sent all the new music, so you just get to work in a CD library the whole time so it was good.

Did you have to have a real encyclopedic knowledge of music?
I did, I’ve kind of lost all my knowledge since then because when you’re doing something every day, you build up a path, so you know if you take out one CD, you know it will lead you to another one. I’ve kinda lost all that now as I don’t need it at the moment.

When you perform, it’s just you up on stage, like a one-man band with a plethora of instruments. Do you ever nervous, or wish you had a backing band?
I get nervous all the time. Mainly about what could go wrong. When you’re dealing with loads of electronic stuff, it can go wrong.  The laptop overheated in Belgium once and I’d driven from the U.K. so I’d driven 500 miles from the U.K. To play essentially what was an acoustic set. It started acting really weird so I had to play and acoustic show and then drive back. It was a real low point. Touch wood, that’s the only bad thing that happened.

Do you have any rituals or anything to ward off nerves?
No rituals, but I do get very nervous. I pace around a lot. It’s actually worse now that I’ve got more riding on each gig. Especially with the new set. After playing the old set so much you almost get muscle memory, you don’t even have to think about what to do whereas now it’s all still quite new and I really have to think through the set, what’s coming up next.

Your surname is quite uncommon. What’s the worst pun anyone’s made with it?
My middle initial is R for Roderick, it’s a horrible name, I hate it – let’s get that out there straightaway – so if you say my name James R Yuill, it’s basically a question in itself. So I’ve had that a lot, loads…it’s the misspelling as well.

I think the worst one I read was “Yuill be a fool to miss him”
Yeah, or “Yuill be sorry…” you kind of get used to it. It’s the misspelling more but I’ve just got to check my ego, it’s still quite a random name.