Basement Jaxx

For well over a decade, the duo of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe, otherwise known as Basement Jaxx, have helped pioneer club music to its current hybrid state. With multiple dance hits on a global scale, the duo’s taken their deejay talents and celebratory live show to audiences worldwide. So it’s interesting to hear the group say they’re trying to figure out where they fit anymore.

Their new album, Scars, drops this month in the States and Stereo Subversion recently sat down with Ratcliffe to discuss coming to the end of a record deal, finding new avenues for their music and why the laptop has changed everything for them.

SSv: I want to start with another interview I read recently that mentioned your struggle to know where you fit. That was so interesting considering you’ve been at this so long. Can you explain that a bit?

Simon Ratcliffe: I think in the last few years, club music has been very minimal and stripped down. There’s not been many vocals and not much melody. It’s cool I guess and there’s some good stuff out there, but I think we just didn’t know what we wanted to do. The first thing we came up with is this sort of ambient, experimental music which we’re going to release afterwards. There’s a second part to this album which we spent six months working on and it’s just music for the mind and us being a little self-indulgent, I think. It’s what we want to do but it’s not pop music and it’s not club music, you know?

So that’s where we were at and doing a club track seemed a bit irrelevant really, especially now really. Everyone can do club music on their laptop. Everything seems so available and there’s just so much stuff out there, so really what’s the point of making another club track.

But having said that, I think the last seven or eight months or so, we started to feel there was a new feeling coming through. I don’t know if it’s because of the recession or something, but music has taken a brighter turn – more of an escapist, colorful sound. So we started to feel we could contribute something to that again.

But there was definitely a feeling of being a bit lost, I suppose.

SSv: Do you feel a responsibility to contribute to that vibe – that new positive direction?

Simon: [Pause] I feel that I want to do it for myself really. You can’t help but be conscious of people who follow our careers and people who’ve been with us for a long time, so you want to make them happy. You can’t ignore that. But at the same time, I want it for myself. I want to do something that takes me away from this world and tells me there’s a better way and that there are actual possibilities.

But I don’t know if I feel it’s my duty to do it. I think you can do it. I think you can contribute to it.

SSv: If everyone can make club music, how do you challenge yourself now with the ease of technology?

Simon: Well, the stuff we did with ambient music, as I said, that was a million miles away from laptop club music. And then we’re also working with different people – someone like Lightspeed Champion whose music is almost folk, maybe. It’s this folky guitar and it’s from another world. So it’s working with him, working with Yoko Ono and Paloma and just getting various people involved.

It’s funny because everything is such a hybrid nowadays. When we were doing stuff 12 years ago, we used to take samples from different cultures and different genres of music and put them all together and that was something that we were really known for doing. And that was quite an exciting thing to do. But that’s nothing new anymore. Everyone seems to be so educated nowadays and those things happen all the time.

Working with Lightspeed Champion, there he is this singer/songwriter and then on the side, we were having fun and he just started rapping. He came out with this real hardcore dirty rap that we recorded. You know, everything is cross-vocalized and kids today are really into everything. If it’s cool, it’s cool and it doesn’t matter if it’s a rock track, a dance track, a rap track. People are just into the whole mix.

SSv: I’m glad you brought up Lightspeed Champion. How do you decide who to work with on Scars? Does the song come first or do the collaborations make the song?

Simon: It depends really. With Lightspeed Champion, it was just that we really liked his stuff, so we brought him in. We had a couple of grooves and musical backings that we thought sounded good. We asked him which one he liked and he picked a couple. We just wrote a song from there. That was just done in the studio and he started playing guitar on top of the backing track and started singing something, so that one happened spontaneously.

With Yo Majesty, we had a couple ideas and we were in the studio with them and they liked what we had and they started doing their thing. It happened the same way. With them, it’s hard to tell them what to do because they just do their own thing. They just kind of look at you like you’re trash if you tell them what to do. So then we came back to London and edited it and took the bits that we liked.

There are some songs that we’ve written like “Feelings Gone” and you’re trying to find the vocal that goes with it. We tried a few people singing it and the voice that will do it justice. Then luckily and reasonably late, Sam Sparro came along and it turned out he was a Basement Jaxx fan from years ago when he used to live in London and he was excited to work with us. So we got him in there and he just suited it perfectly. So that was lucky. It’s just trial and error a lot of times.

Sometimes it’s the first person who sings and with others you have to try different people. Often, there’s a few people singing it. On “Scars,” we have a lot of different versions. On that track now is Kelis on the verse, Meleka on the chorus and Chipmunk toward the end and we just leave it all in there.

SSv: You guys have worked with Lisa Kekaula over several albums, so what brings you back to her?

Simon: Oh, she’s great. She has that raw, dirty, strong rock and soul voice. We love her. She’s such a wicked character and we’ve not heard anyone with a voice like her. We toured with her and she toured with us on the CASH album. She’s got passion and she’s got fire. She’s the real deal and she’s not a bullshitter. It’s just real with her.

SSv: With the release of Scars in the States and a global level, is there a better scene for you guys in some places than others? Is it good here in the States?

Simon: Well, we’re about to find out. We’re coming over in October for a while and I know that a lot of English people are leaving to go live in L.A. I think MIA lives over there and L.A. is a happening place at the moment. It certainly sounds very attractive. The scene in the States very generally speaking seems to be very alive and really buzzing, so we’ll find out when we come over and we come across the whole section of stuff. We’ll give people our whole flavor.

The live show would be amazing to do. To deejay is one thing, but the whole live show is an entirely different thing. Over the last few years, it’s taken on a new life. A lot of people in Europe know us for our live show and they don’t even know our albums at all. They know it’s a live act worth seeing. I mean, there’s around 12 people on stage and 8 crew, so 20 of us travel around all over the place. It’s a big production with guitars, drums, trumpet, three or four singers, just a whole collective. There’s lot of fun and it’s really alive.

Japan is really good for us. Australia is really good. England is really good, obviously. But I don’t know where we stand in America. I know our first couple albums did all right over there. I know we’ve had good critical response over there in some magazines. But I don’t know how you break into mainstream America.

The thing is our music is very English. It’s a mish-mash of culture, you know? It’s very hard to pigeon-hole us and in America I think things are very much that way. You have rock radio and rap radio, is that correct?

SSv: Yes.

Simon: Yeah, then so it makes it hard to tell. But maybe that’s why we’ve been going so long is that we don’t really get tied in to anything and the possibilities are always open to us.

SSv: So where do you go after the contract with XL is up and after Scars is out?

Simon: Well, we really don’t know. Felix wants to go off and find a wife. The soundscape stuff has been nice, so I’d like to do more of that. I’d like to do more music that’s just music with no particular structure or purpose or shape or form. It’s definitely hard when you get known for something to follow it up, especially when you’re doing your fifth album and you’re trying to work it out who you’re doing it for. You start overthinking things, so I’m looking forward to some spontaneity and less thoughts.

I’d also like to travel a bit, maybe take off for a couple of months with my family. I’ve got a partner and little daughter. I don’t know really overall. The world has changed so much that I don’t even know if we need a contract to continue. Everything is possible really. I’d like to do something with film, so I’ll probably try a few things with no deadlines hanging over us. So we’ll throw things out there and try some creative experiments.

*Illustration by Jason Horning.

Tagged as: Dance, Electronica, UK

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