page_title: Xx (album)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Xx (album) / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: The Elliott School in 2004
context_page_description: xx is the debut album by English indie pop band the xx. It was released on 14 August 2009 by Young Turks, an imprint label of XL Recordings. After signing a record contract with XL, the xx recorded the album from December 2008 to February 2009 at the label's in-house studio in London. The audio engineer Rodaidh McDonald worked with the band during the recording sessions and attempted to reproduce the intimate, unembellished quality of their demos. The band's Jamie Smith produced xx on his laptop and created electronic beats for the songs, which he then mixed in a detailed process with McDonald.
  Although the xx had been strongly influenced by R&B acts, the album also drew comparisons from critics to alternative rock, electronica and post-punk sounds. The melancholic songs on xx feature minimalist arrangements and are built around Smith's beats, Oliver Sim's basslines and sparse guitar figures played by Baria Qureshi and Romy Madley Croft, who employed reverb in her lead guitar parts. Most of the songs are sung as low-key duets by Croft and Sim, both of whom wrote emotional lyrics about love, intimacy, loss and desire.
context_section_description: While students at South London's Elliott School in 2005, childhood friends Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim formed the xx with Jamie Smith and Baria Qureshi. Croft and Sim played guitar and bass, respectively, and dueted as the band's vocalists, while Smith programmed electronic beats for their songs and Qureshi doubled as a keyboardist and additional guitarist. During late nights, Croft and Sim either shared lyrics with each other through instant messaging or rehearsed quietly with Smith and Qureshi in their bedrooms so they would not disturb the rest of the household. The xx were greatly influenced by American R&B producers such as The Neptunes and Timbaland, whose minimalist productions incorporated vocal harmonies, clapping percussion, unconventional samples and pronounced beats. The band covered Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire" (1997), Womack & Womack's "Teardrops" (1988) and other past R&B hits when they performed live and recorded their demos.
  After posting the demos on their Myspace page, the xx drew the interest of Young Turks, an imprint label of XL Recordings. They submitted the demos to XL's head office at Ladbroke Grove and were subsequently signed to a recording contract. The group worked with producers such as Diplo and Kwes, to no success before they were introduced to the audio engineer Rodaidh McDonald by the xx's manager Caius Pawson, who gave him three CDs of demos titled "Early Demos", "Recorded in Rehearsal Space" and "What Producers Did Wrong". McDonald was impressed by the intimate quality and use of silence on the demos, which both he and the band felt may have challenged other producers who wanted to incorporate their individual tastes: "They'd worked with about four other producers before then that had – and no discredit to them – I guess they'd seen a lot of space to add a kind of stamp on. There was a lot of empty space in the xx's music, even then, in the 'Early Demos'. But we just found that the best stuff was the most sparse."
caption: The Elliott School in London, where the xx studied and formed
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