Everybody's talking about Jamie xx

South London's hottest export on politics, fame, therapy and finally growing up

- CRAIG MCLEAN

Sunday evening in Hong Kong and, from his suite on an elevated floor of the Mandarin Oriental, Jamie xx can see — just — tonight’s gig. Squatting down there by Central Harbourfront, flanked by a glittering big wheel and the even more glittering skyscrapers of the city’s financial district, are the multiple stages of Clockenflap.

It’s the final night of the three-day music festival. The south London-raised DJ, producer and sometime member of The xx is one of the closing acts, performing alongside fellow bill-topper Jack White and succeeding the previous days’ headliners Central Cee, Suede, Air and excellently-named Japanese hip-hop duo Creepy Nuts.

This is the festival-bossing level at which the in-demand musician finds himself. He’s released two acclaimed, dancefloor-igniting solo albums; remixed/produced big hitters including Florence + the Machine, Radiohead, Adele, Drake and Alicia Keys; scored Wayne McGregor’s ballet Tree of Codes; and composed the music for Romain Gavras’s film The World is Yours. With The xx on hiatus since 2017’s third album I See You, Jamie xx is arguably currently bigger than the band with which, as a shy teenager, he enjoyed success straight out of the gate, their self-titled 2009 debut winning the Mercury Prize and becoming a global phenomenon. Certainly his solo career has outpaced the individual records released by his more forward-facing bandmates, co-vocalists Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft.