Basement Jaxx new music report

The “Christian Rock” pick in this week’s New Music Report (contributing editor Christian Hoard’s current fave) is Scars, the fifth album from British house duo Basement Jaxx. The group’s 2001 album Rooty featured the hit “Romeo,” which charted in the States thanks to its synthetic yet warm vibe, and Scars is their best album since then. All the tracks are all sung by guest vocalists including Santigold and Kelis, as well as smaller names like Paloma Faith, who takes the lead on “What’s a Girl Got to Do.” It’s a song that’s ready for an iPod commercial with its clipped disco groove, keyboard stabs and rejiggered New Orleans brass.
The beats on Scars are often stronger than the songs, but when Basement Jaxx get a hot beat and a hot tune together you get something magical: progressive pop. It is dance music that can venture into the cheesy — but it’s a good cheesy.

New Album Surrounded by Drama, Basement Jaxx

It's unlikely that Simon Ratcliffe will forget the night he spent sitting next to a crack freak with no legs. Surprisingly, the unfortunate man was the least of the Basement Jaxx member's worries. Ratcliffe was in New York for a recording session for the London based dance duo's fifth album, 'Scars,' which was released Tuesday, when he received a phone call informing him that his wife and baby daughter had been taken to a hospital. It was one of the rare occasions that Ratcliffe had his family with him while working, and the news was particularly disturbing as his daughter was only several weeks old. "It was actually stressful. It was particularly scary, her being newborn, they're such fragile little things," Ratcliffe tells Spinner. The sudden illness, which was due to a virus, had Ratcliffe so disturbed that he rushed to the hospital. "I spent the night in the emergency room at St. Vincent's hospital sitting next to a crack addict with no legs," he says with an incredulous sigh. His wife and daughter recovered and were fine. Did the incident or his colorful ER companion inspire any songs? "I didn't get a song out of it this time, but maybe for the next record," he laughs.Really, it was his Basement Jaxx Partner Felix Buxton's personal crisis that shaped the album. "Felix was writing were about the personal dramas in his life, mostly his efforts trying to find a good woman. Along the way he's had, yeah, dramatic moments," offers Ratcliffe. Still, the record isn't a mopey affair; Its upbeat vibe comes from living to tell the tale. "Part of life is picking yourself up and dusting yourself off and being proud of who you are. It's just living, actually."