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.

For Good Vibrations the Killers and Basement Jaxx

Headline to the Killers will Good Vibrations 2010 with Basement Jaxx and Armand Van Helden also joining the stellar line up.
In February is Good Vibration in Sydney, Perth, Gold Coast and Melbourne.
Also announced were Gossip, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, Friendly Fires, Z-Trip, Naughty By Nature, Plump DJs, Gym Class Heroes, Chas & Statud, Dave Deaman, DJ Craze, Chuckie, Art vs Science, Bass Kelph, Sam Obernik and Killaqueenz.
Dates are:
Sydney, Centennial Park - Saturday 13 FebruaryPerth, Claremont Showground - Sunday 14 FebruaryGold Coast, Parklands Showgrounds - Saturday 20 FebruaryMelbourne, The Nursery, Flemington Racecourse – Sunday 21 February

Basement Jaxx: Adam Ant Inspiration Felix Buxton reveals

Basement Jaxx returning dance giants have revealed their childhood love of Adam and the Ants.
Basement Jaxx began life as a group of DJs on London's always bustling dance scene. The turntablists quickly realised that they knew their dancefloor better than anyone and began crafting their own tracks.
Chart stardom followed before the duo decided to take a short break. This year with a new album returning, Basement Jaxx stunned fans with a series of sizzling festivals at RockNess and beyond.
Releasing 'Scars' towards the end of the summer Basement Jaxx topped a sensational comeback with more chart success. However in a new interview the band have revealed their childhood love of another chart star - Adam Ant.
"I was a massive Adam and the Ants fan until they got too silly and camp" Felix Buxton told Pitchfork. "But 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' was actually cool and tribal. He's got the great line in that song: "I feel beneath the white there is a red skin suffering from centuries of taming." I thought he was a real wild boy trapped in civilized society."
"I related to that growing up whenever I used to play cowboys and Indians I always thought the Indians were the cool ones."
The Basement Jaxx producer also revealed that he retains an admiration for The Police. "I was trying to work out which tribe I belonged to and I finally realized that I didn't belong in any of them, exactly."
"But I did like the Police because my sister's friend drew footages of them and I had these hand drawn pictures on my bedroom wall. I used to try and sing like Sting I could sound pretty much like him on a few songs because my voice hadn't broken yet. At this point, it's very uncool to like Sting because he's so pretentious. He's annoying but talented."

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."

'Musical collision' Basement Jaxx's

Basement Jaxx have revealed their new album Scars will be a "collision" of styles thanks to the change artists they have collaborated with.
Felix Buxton said: "The new album is obviously new, it's got elements of the early Basement Jaxx and it's got where we are now, and effectively, the guests we've got on there makes it a change musical collision than we had before, with people like Yoko Ono, Santogold and Sam Sparro.
"Obviously they all bring their vibe to the thing as well, so it's us going out into the world a bit more rather than just being stuck in Brixton."

SCARS Basement Jaxx

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Basement Jaxx: Scars

Basement Jaxx's Scars arrives after a troubled gestational period, with the duo citing numerous changes, both personal and musical, as leaving them feeling 'a bit lost'. After four albums and with many of their contemporaries having faded from the public view somewhat, it seemed that the Brixton duo had reached something of an impasse. Having dabbled with a darker minimalist sound, it was as currently as the turn of the year that the duo decided to up the positivity, citing their hearing of Dizzee Rascal and Armand Van Helden's 'Bonkers' as a inspiration for this change.
Consequently, lead single 'Raindrops' was intentionally written in the mould of singles like 'Romeo' and 'Red Alert' etc. Perhaps naturally, it's no revelation musically, but it is undeniably great dance-pop; arriving on waves of fuzzy synths, subdued bass-heavy verses bursting into a typically catchy chorus that is at once glistening and pounding. Disappointingly it is the only track to feature the band's Felix Buxton on lead vocals, as he is easily the equal of many of the guest vocalists. Despite being heavily auto-tuned he provides one of the album's most sensual moments when he proclaims "Your moisture drips upon my lips just like a waterfall straight through the heart of me".
Follow-up single 'Feelings Gone' is a sumptuous up-tempo ballad dripping with sentimental string samples and a surprisingly affecting vocal from Sam Sparro. It's the first track in a trio of early-to-mid album tracks which demonstrate that Basement Jaxx didn't completely forsake the melancholic roots of Scars. 'My Turn' sounds almost like one of guest vocalist Lightspeed Champion's own, the marriage between taut distorted synth bass and his genteel acoustic picking sounding suprisingly natural. The beautiful 'A Possibility' features gossamer-delicate slide guitar that may fool you into thinking you are still listening to Lightspeed Champion, although vocalist Amp Fiddler utilises more soulful intonation while the languid pacing coupled with electronic tics recalls Sophtware Slump-era Grandaddy.
It's a typically expansive roll call of guest vocalists to match. The album opens with the Timbaland indebted title-track featuring Kelis, Meleka and Chipmunk. That's two vocalists too many, and the song lacks a focal point, but the emphatic low-end, crisp beats and irresistibly sweeping choral-synths win out in the end. 'Saga' is a successful experiment in crossing grimy synthetic breeds of dancehall and ska with Santigold sounding suitably embittered for a track which Buxton says he wrote quickly as an act of mid-separation catharsis. Of the lesser-known guest spots the decision to get Lisa Kekaula (of The Bellrays) to purr over Junior Boys-esque blocks of hazy synth and crisp frigid rhythms was particularly inspired.
Inevitably there are a number of less successful tracks. Paloma Faith's sassy vocal contribution on 'What's a Girl Got To Do?' feels forced and the cabaret music further makes Faith sound unfortunately like the fourth Puppini sister. 'D.I.S.Tractionz' boasts fantastic string/vibraphone interplay, but is let down by singer Jose Hendrix's lack of presence. The highest profile guest slot is undoubtedly Yoko Ono; the stridently simple beat, driving bass and aqueous synth washes make 'Day of the Sunflowers (We March On)' one of the musical highlights and Ono's chanting on the chorus is infectious. Unfortunately her nonsensical rantings about "20,000 fishes flying down from the sky" on the verse will make you cringe, whilst her simulation of orgasmic gasping near the song's climax (ahem) will simply make you shudder.
Scars' abundance of collaborators doesn't really allow Basement Jaxx to stamp their personality on the music, which is a shame, especially considering its fraught origins However, perhaps this is a little too much to expect from a duo who specialize in maximalist dance floor fillers and whose boundless energy and eclecticism is a form of catharsis in itself. If Basement Jaxx want to hide their scars behind such esily enjoyable and well constructed pop music, then long may they continue.