Jaxx of All Trades
Stepping out of the DJ spotlight, U.K. duo focuses on the music with 'Kish Kash'
The superstar DJ thing is so last year. Just ask Basement Jaxx, the British dance-music duo that once jetsetted it to super-clubs the world over just to blend a few 12-inch records, drink champagne, and get paid. Not a bad life, but they're over it, as are Richie Hawtin, BT, and several others who have embraced laptop performance as the logical progression from two turntables.
"People are fed up with paying a lot of money hearing some old bloke playing dub mixes for five hours at the same tempo," says the Jaxx's Felix Buxton, 33. "Playing the Neptunes next to rock next to house is more interesting. People are starting to tap into the music again. That's what it's about."
This sounds so simple, yet so true. Sort of like the Jaxx's just-released CD, Kish Kash, which has made a splash with its futuristic production, far-reaching influences (punk singer Siouxsie Sioux, British rapper Dizzee Rascal, and N' Sync trainspotter JC Chasez appear), and devilishly diverse sounds. (The album will surely spawn some new genres, or at least journalistic attempts to name them: Punktronica? E-clash? Anyone?) Even the Miami Herald likes it. The Miami Herald! ("Basement Jaxx made a believer out of me," writes a Herald critic. "I was a dance-music skeptic." 'Nuff said.)
"I'm surprised how good the response has been," Buxton says. "It's our third album, and I thought we were due for a kicking now. People are happy we're doing something different, and we wanted something different. It's deeper and more diverse and a bit more a full experience and less club-based."
To be sure, the Brixton, U.K., twosome has always mixed it up, playing turntable pranks using Prince, Michael Jackson, and new wave just to see who gets it. In the mid-'90s, Jaxx member Simon Ratcliffe was manning the guitar for funked-up housers Mutiny UK but left to embrace a more promising neo-house sound. Inspired by their legendary basement parties at a South London Irish pub, the Jaxx were born. Soon they were tapping joyous Latin flavors and forming a global conga line with "Samba Magic." Then, on "Flylife," the Jaxx took Chicago's cut-up disco and put it through a food processor until it liquified into creamy bliss.
Soon, they were being compared to Daft Punk, DJ Sneak, and Armand Van Helden. The 1997 compilation named for the pair's vinyl label, Atlantic Jaxx, captures this era of jack-your-body glory. In 1999, the duo's first true full-length, Remedy, hit stores and awakened critics with its uplifting bacchanalia (including an ode to Sneak). In 2001, the duo punked-up house with Rooty and set themselves on a date with the mainstream. The bombastic "Where's Your Head At" ended up in a Pringles commercial. Mobyesque. Even so, the Jaxx couldn't forget house. "Where's Your Head At" featured vocal shouts from New York club mainstays Erick Morillo and Junior Sanchez. But with Kish Kash, the Jaxx have truly left home, or at least the thumping four-on-the-floor formula of house.
"When I first heard house, it blew me away," says Buxton, who still spins around Brixton now and again but will likely tour with a band in support of Kish Kash starting next month. "It was so fresh and different and exciting, and there's not that excitement now. You have to look for new things."
"That whole kind of house world, Daft Punk and Armand Van Helden, they were in our area, using elements of house music and doing individual things and twisting the form - that kind of club scene has disappeared," he continues. "Now it's electro or U.K. garage or people playing in a band in a garage. House music was 15 years ago. It's just reiterating the same old thing."
Kish Kash certainly isn't the same old thing. It could cause a car accident. Or two. The duo's usual sound-clash of house, punk, and Brazilia is enough to make you stomp on the brakes and start dancing in the street already. But on Kish Kash, the Jaxx twist the nipples off their music boxes and throw samples at you from all angles like it's a musical obstacle course. Last year, the duo skipped the annual dance-industry retreat, the Winter Music Conference in Miami, in order to work on the album. For them, it was a good move.
"Our absence affected us," Buxton says. "We weren't worried if it wasn't a DJ album. We're not going to be constrained by the club. When we started, we thought it was going to be an ambient album. We thought, we can always get remixes. Our first two were party albums, but this is a different kind of party album."
When the pair returned from touring, he says, "We both split up with our girlfriends and tried to get back into our old lives, and we tried to get our feet back on the ground again. The Iraq situation had kicked off. We had written a song called 'So You Want to Be a Hero' aimed at George Bush trying to be a hero and cowboy figure." They sent it to Sioux, who wrote her own version, "Cish Cash." "I suppose the war situation and fundamentalism affected us," he adds.
The CD immediately hits you with "Good Luck," a sassy break-up lecture from Los Angeles singer Lisa Kekaula (of the BellRays) that rocks out with a 16-piece orchestra. Meshell Ndegeocello gets downright freaky on "Right Here's the Spot" ("Feel my effect," she says as the analog keys wail). "Lucky Star" is a bizarre ride to the far side, only instead of Fatlip we have rising U.K. star Dizzee Rascal belting out the oddities as the bombastic booty beats surround you in Outkastian fashion. "Supersonic" is a knee-slappin', harmonica-grabbin' front-porch jam that is the collection's closest thing to a true house track. "Plug It In," appropriately, places JC Chasez in an outrageously campy musical, and you can imagine him surrounded by ripped muscle boys tipping their hats in unison to his falsetto. "If I Ever Recover" is like a rainy-day reminiscence of lost love. Along with the Ndegeocello-sung "Feels Like Home," the two tracks are the only remotely subtle things on the CD. "Tonight" sits you down by the fire and takes you on a sexy, Carlos Castaneda-style journey into Spanish-guitar-driven psychedelia. Title track "Cish Cash" features the pouty punk vocals of Sioux and is truly the piece de resistance: Live drums pound and roll, and claps keep track of the uptempo romp as synths provide the grinding CBGB effect. "Living Room" is straight garage-punk, albeit sliced up in a digital loop factory.
The production reaches out and grabs you. Synths get pinched until they scream. Bells, whistles, shouts, and cries come in from all directions. Vocals seem to float in a stratosphere of their own, while loose booty breaks and "2-step" beats move like an assembly line below. Sometimes the sound is downright shocking. ("It's like they're trying to throw the wildest grooviest party ever with the most eclectic soundtrack and the most unexpected guests," noted U.K. music critic Simon Reynolds recently on his web log.)
"Recording audio straight to the computer gave us more scope and possibility," Buxton says of the duo's new Macintosh setup that uses Logic sound-editing software. "The result is a punky attitude with some soul to it. And at our parties it all fits together; it all makes sense."Published: 11/06/2003
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