Basement Jaxx are getting back in the groove ahead of Indiependence
IT’S nice to be liked again, says Basement Jaxx’s Felix Buxton. The London duo’s upbeat dance music hasn’t always chimed with the times, but joyous party grooves are again in fashion. What better moment for Basement Jaxx to return with a new album and an ambitious new tour?
“We had started to notice that the kind of music we made was finding a new audience,” says Buxton.
“There was a move towards producers and DJs creating music again. Our previous album [2009’s reflective Zephyr] had been a departure for us. We thought it was time to make something [celebratory] once more.”
Basement Jaxx used to sound like the future. In the late ’90s, the beat-happy partnership of Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe burst out of the south London house scene, touting a boundary-smashing splicing of good vibes and giddy rhythms. Best of all were their live shows – a celebratory carnival featuring horn sections, feathered dancers and a revolving cast of vocalists. Even if you loathed club music, you were sure to be caught up in the pedal-to-the-floor positivity.
However, tastes changed in the 2000s. The popularity of dance music diminished, as rock again established its primacy. Also, the relentless optimism Basement Jaxx championed via hits such as Romeo and Red Alert came to be regarded as naive and unduly idealistic. Maybe, we simply tired of their eternally upbeat demeanour.
“But now it’s come around,” says Buxton. “Dance music has a big following. We were in America last year and the sort of stuff we had explored early in our career was popular again. Something seems to have happened. It’s exciting to be involved in that.”
The low-point for Basement Jaxx was surely the mid 2000s, as dance music turned po-faced and intractable. Shiny happy-beat merchants were not exactly highly sought. Buxton and Ratcliffe found themselves staring irrelevance in the face.
“Clubbing got very serious and minimalist and self-consciously cool,” Buxton said at the time. “That was very much to do with fashion. It was a reaction to what had come previously. It was very chic to get rid of any statement of individuality. It’s kind of easy to keep it cool. It’s a lot harder to actually say something or stand up and be counted.”
They stayed in the game by being consistently engaging on stage. The Basement Jaxx live experience always has just one goal: To give the audience the best night of their lives. Anything less and Buxton and Ratcliffe believe they have failed.
“The idea is to have this great night out,” he says. “It isn’t about anyone recognising our songs or any of that. What we really want is for them to have a party to remember.”
That isn’t to say touring doesn’t have its downsides. At the height of their popularity, Buxton and Ratcliffe spent so long on the road they began to feel like strangers when they came home. It could be profoundly disorienting.
“It’s exciting, but you do lose contact slightly from people. Your friends aren’t waiting around for you to come back. They have lives to get on with.”
Buxton grew up in a village in the English midlands. His was a rather puritanical childhood. His father, the local vicar, had firm views on popular culture, of which he almost entirely disapproved. Thus, the children were not allowed to watch Top of the Pops, and instead invited to partake of dad’s collection of Japanese and Austrian folk music.
“Don’t reach for the stars, just do something honest and real,” was the message Reverend Buxton drilled into his kids. He urged Felix to join the armed forces or become an engineer, advice his son conspicuously failed to follow.
‘Never Say Never’, the lead single from new LP Junto, topped the dance charts in the US. Much of the credit for its success is surely owed to the video, featuring a “twerking” robot. Buxton would love to claim credit. Actually, it was mostly the idea of the director Saman Kesh.
“We tend to approach videos two ways,” says Buxton. “Either we are fully involved and quite hands on, or we give the director creative freedom. It’s always nice when a video achieves momentum. It happened with ‘Where’s Your Head At ?’, [the highly-controversial video accompanying the 2001 single] and it has happened this time too — the video takes on this life of its own.”
BEST OF THE REST AT INDIEPENDENCE
For those who had despaired of our present generation of clean-scrubbed rock stars, the Dandy Warhols are a glorious reminder of how things used to be.
Led by the stylishly disheveled Courtney Taylor-Taylor the Dandys have, through their near-20 year career, raised loucheness to something approaching an art.
With a voice suggesting gravel mixed with bourbon and a flair for Americana dirges, the former Screaming Trees singer is a singular presence in alternative music.
Tim Wheeler and company became literal teenage icons when their debut album breached the UK top 40 shortly after they had left school. The Downpatrick group have since cannily managed their evolution from chart featherweights to serious artists in it for the long haul.
They’ve just returned triumphantly to the long-play format with comeback record Kablammo!
Two-time Choice Music Prize winner Richie Egan this year put out his finest record yet, This Chemical Sea. Inspired by his experience of living in Sweden while trying to maintain a career in Ireland, the album is at once reflective yet bristling with off-key energy.
To casual listeners Egan will of course be best known for writing ‘Floating,’ as famously covered by Jack White with his band The Raconteurs.
The opinion-dividing soft-rockers, pictured have achieved success in their native Ireland, as well as in the UK and, increasingly, America.
Whatever you think of their guitar-pop, there is no denying their popularity and securing them as headliners ranks as a genuine coup for the festival.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
