Since nailing the zeitgeist with the xx’s Mercury-winning debut, the DJ-producer has collaborated with everyone from Drake to Wayne McGregor. As his hugely enjoyable second solo LP drops, he talks about his newfound desire for calm

Jamie Smith has been incommunicado. He’s just returned from a holiday in Norway: a remote cabin in a quiet valley, where he had to catch his own fish for dinner. Best of all, he says with a blissful expression, there was no wifi or mobile phone reception. Smith talks about his phone like it’s a ravenous predator he has to go to great lengths to evade. It took him five days to stop instinctively reaching for it. “I have a lot of hang-ups about the phone,” he admits. “I’m annoyed how much control it has over me. It seems like that can’t be good for the brain.”

It’s funny hearing Smith rhapsodise about the hermit life because he makes his living in loud places. As Jamie xx, he is not only one-third of the xx but perhaps the most far-reaching British DJ-producer of his generation – a cultural superconnector whose work transcends the club and bridges the spheres of pop and art. Yet at the same time, he is always trying to slow down and live in the moment. He does yoga. He surfs. He meditates, sporadically. He tries to read books in the evening instead of watching screens. He fantasises about giving it all up. “I love the idea of living in a beach shack and going surfing every day and that being it,” he says wistfully. “Not having a phone is the dream.”