When Jeff Smith moved to Leeds in 2009, he was set to establish himself in the UK city's music scene.

"At the time, Leeds had a very welcoming and communal character to its live music scene," Jeff Smith tells Myspace. "Though I think to some outsiders it can seem sort of insular and cliquey, probably a lot of that just has to do with the fact that everyone involved is about one person removed from knowing everyone in one way or another."

However, as he gigged around town and met other musicians, his new project Living Body grew from a solo thing to a band. We had the chance to learn more about how Living Body turned into a full-fledged band, the debut LP, Body is Working, and how this American expat is living in a post-Brexit England.

Hometown: Leeds, England by way of Chicago

The act was meant to be a one-off gig. What made you guys want to continue this and eventually make an album?

I used to play solo under the name, Juffage, for a few years but became good friends with the guys from Vessels and Katie (Harkin, of Sky Larkin and now live member of Sleater-Kinney and Flock of Dimes) shortly after moving to Leeds. In fact, the second show I played in Leeds after moving here from Chicago was with Vessels. Katie came up and introduced herself after the show, and we started chatting after she pointed out that we both had the same guitar, which was quite remarkable as only 700 of them were ever made.

We all became good friends, and I continued playing solo for a few years. At some point, I was approached by the events programmer at Left Bank about doing a Juffage concert there, but knew that the typical live sets I was doing at the time wouldn’t work in that space. As Left Bank is an enormous deconsecrated church, I wanted to use the venue as an instrument to do something more immersive and atmospheric, and sympathetic to the acoustics of the venue. So, I started building a computer program to spatialize the sound of a live performance in real-time around an ambisonic array of eight loudspeakers, which would encircle the audience.

I guess Katie somehow heard about these ridiculous plans and called me out of the blue to ask if she could play in the concert. I was also writing a lot of new songs at the time, such as "I Recollect," so it seemed fitting to get her on board. Once it became apparent that Katie and I were going to need extra hands, I got Tom and Jenna involved. So, we all started working together on it and in the end, all of the songs played in that concert were brand new songs. Afterwards, I started recording all of these new songs and getting the others to come in record their parts. At some point, it didn’t feel like a Juffage record anymore. It was pretty obvious that we were a band.

You've put Living Body's music under the post-Brexitcore umbrella. How do you feel it works in that genre?

Well, I’m not entirely sure it is a genre, just something we made up because it felt appropriate. In shock, it’s hard to take anything seriously. I just kind of put it in the Soundcloud tags as a joke because our first single, "Don’t Give Up On Me," came out the week of the EU referendum vote. Even though the song was a cover and written in the mid 1990s (and recorded by us a few months earlier), by sheer coincidence its message seemed to resonate perfectly with the mood we all had following the vote that week. It felt almost as if we were singing from the perspective of the European Union. It’s strange how prophetic it felt in hindsight, despite having no apparent direct meaning at the time of recording. And maybe because it’s a cover, its context feels even more malleable. Now with the frightening aftermath of the US presidential election, it almost feels as if we’re saying, "we won’t give up on the old idea of America, the America that I grew up in where immigrants were valued and a diversity of opinion was embraced."

As a US immigrant now living in the UK, America hardly feels like the same country I was born in, and even the UK seems markedly different to when I moved here in late 2009. In short, "Don’t Give Up On Me" was the original post-Brexitcore song. It’s essentially saying that it’s healthy to be hopeful and optimistic and not let big globalized business and political interests pave over ideals of a better, more equitable future for humanity.