Give it a Lash, Jaxx

It’s been a bit of a difficult decade for those supreme pontiffs of dance music Basement Jaxx. While the so-called noughties began with a bang and they notched up an array of accolades (such as Grammy and Brit Awards) the dynamic duo found themselves in a bit of a pickle between the release of 06’s Crazy Itch Radio and this year’s return to form, Scars. You see the ever fickle finger of fame moved elsewhere for a while and mainstream music fans abandoned the future sounds of clubland and rediscovered guitar bands instead. In some ways it left Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe out in the cold, but as with any scene, the cycle looks like it’s about to boom once again, if the youth of L.A. are anything to go by.

“Dance music is a massive thing in America at the moment and it’s amazing because there are really young kids into the scene over there,” grins be-hatted head honcho Felix. “Ten years ago they’d have probably been listening to grunge and now there’s definitely been a dance explosion. It’s great to see. We’ve just got back from America where we’d done a little promo tour for the new album and you could see the excitement on people’s faces. We did an amazing rave on Hallowe’en night in L.A. - I dressed up as an old undead pirate - and it reminded me of the glory days.”
While the Jaxx have only just released their well-received fifth record, Scars, they’re also planning to release a new mini-album called Zephyr to coincide with their up-coming tour. Anyone expecting a heady mix of funky jams and good time hooks however, might be surprised to learn that the band are taking a different approach.
“Zephyr is a more chilled, melancholy and reflective work than anything we’ve ever done. It’s totally different from Scars and it’s not for festivals or the clubs - it’s for listening to when you have a bit of downtime. If you want to look out the window and stare at the sky or lie in the bath, then Zephyr is a perfect soundtrack for that. I suppose if you’ve people round and want to put it on in the background it might work too (laughs).
“But yeah, it’s low key and it’s nice to put something out that’s actually like that,” he continues. “We’ve been touring for a while and tracks from Scars have been going down really well, but if we were going to do a Zephyr live show it’d probably be in a huge wigwam with spacey projections and big pillows.”
This change of pace is something that’s been in the works for a long time in Jaxx-land and as Felix explains, all it took was a bit of encouragement for them to try something new.
“We wanted to do this for a long time. We’ve always done reflective stuff and moodier music, but people have never really taken to it - they usually prefer the up-tempo tracks. However, while we were doing the last album, a couple of people said to us, ‘Oh why don’t you do more of those soundscapey tracks?’ We never realised that anyone actually listened to them (laughs). It was a relief to hear that and it gave us a kick up the arse. In many ways Zephyr is for us as much as anyone else because we’ve always wanted to do something like this.”
So are they worried that the critics may sharpen their paper knives when they hear that Basement Jaxx are “mellowing out”?
“We are quite a modest band,” he concludes. “We do what we do and what people make of it is another thing. I was talking to Irvine Welsh a couple of years ago and he said he never reads reviews. You can spend too much time worrying about tomorrow’s chip papers and you need to rise above that. We’ve never been part of the Heat magazine world, so we don’t get that feeling of being popular today and then tomorrow you’re gone. It’s never been a thing we’ve been striving for I guess.”