If you don’t know what III Points Music, Art and Technology Festival is by now, you’re fresh out of excuses. You might have been forgiven for slighting the Miami-born music festival in 2013, when its inaugural edition brought LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and nearly 50 other acts to bars and music venues across Wynwood. But four years later, III Points has elbowed its way to the forefront with a massive setup at Mana Wynwood Production Village, one-of-a-kind tech activations (last year saw a VR experience created in partnership with NASA) and major headliners. Case in point: The 2017 lineup features Gorillaz, Danny Brown, Bonobo and the xx, a British indie trio made up of Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith (who previously deejayed the festival as a solo artist under the name Jamie xx). We chatted up the band on the heels of its critically acclaimed new album, I See You, and talked about its fresh energetic sound, renewed connection and meeting halfway.
This record sounds as if you’ve all gone outside yourselves. Is that a result of the band’s three-year hiatus?
Jamie Smith: I was away a little longer than I’d expected, but I also felt like I wanted to make the most of it.
Romy Madley Croft: I think this album would have been incredibly different without that. It was hard for us at times, but without [Jamie], it forced Oliver and me to become more self-sufficient as songwriters and to get better at producing our own demos. We got to know ourselves offstage a bit.
When you were making this album, were you conscious of how it would play in front of a live audience?
JS: We weren’t actually really thinking about playing at all while we were in the studio.
Oliver Sim: I was!
RMC: I was!
JS: Maybe that’s why it was so difficult for me to work it all out.
OS: I think going to Jamie’s DJ sets, I felt very envious watching him make people dance, and I was like, I want this for us. And when we came back to the studio, I thought Jamie would be more up for it than he initially was. I think he’d just spent quite a long time making people dance and wanted to do something different. Me and Romy’s demos were a lot more energetic. You were more up for bringing it down.
JS: I was up for everything.
OS: We met in the middle.
Are people usually quite stoic at your shows?
JS: It just depends where you are, but for this record there’s been a lot more wildness. I guess some of the music lends itself to that.
III Points Music, Art and Technology Festival is at Mana Wynwood Oct 13–15 at various times. $190–$345.
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