BASEMENT JAXX ///
INTERVIEW ARYE DWORKEN ///
PHOTOGRAPHER JAMIE BEEDON ///
DATE OCTOBER 22, 2003 ///

In a Basement Jaxx world, everyone is sweaty, half-naked and uninhibited. People dirty dance in ways that go beyond Patrick Swayze's comprehension. Also there is definitely something in the punch and yes, it will probably hurt you in the morning.

But the Jaxx, Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton, wouldn't have their debaucherous sound any other way. On their newest release, Kish Kash (Astralwerks), they've created their most challenging effort yet - a mental mixtape of spastic rock, booty-luscious crunck, and demented disco. It's for people who consider leather pants a metaphorical frame of mind, not necessarily an article of clothing. Kish Kash features an eclectic guest list full of the spell-check-challenged like Britain's hottest new rapper (Dizzee Rascal), the reigning Goth queen (Siouxsie Sioux), and That Other Guy From 'NSYNC (JC Chasez).

In the midst of a whirlwind of interviews and photo shoots, I caught up with Felix on his mobile and in between hang-ups (sure, blame it on the "bad service"), chatted him up about the new album.

The new album is different; there are proper songs with choruses and traditional songwriting...
We didn't want to do club tracks anymore. We've done that already. We want to grow as artists.

Now you're here only for two days. Are things crazy over there?
[Silence]. Uhh, what was that. I'm sorry.

Oh nothing. I was talking to myself. Why did you veer away from house music?
Well, house music is great, but a bit limited. There aren't many DJs that you associate with brilliant, imaginative people. It is fun being out in the middle of the night, being out of your mind, but we're trying to do more than that.

Do you guys drink while you DJ?
Yeah, we do drink and we do a bit of the - yeah, we drink. But not too much. We get affected too easily.

You once said that house music is too stoic and emotionless. Do you think that you have any peers who are trying to do the same thing as you?
Well...no. We really feel that we are by ourselves. Our last album, we had Daft Punk and Armand Van Helden. We related to them, but they haven't released albums in awhile. We don't have anyone to look up to. It's a shame that people aren't doing more interesting music. There are the Streets, for example.

Do you think the Americans got the Streets?
Not really. It was a breath of fresh air. It's very English and it had humor. You can't compare that to much else. I mean, Timbaland, The Neptunes, and Radiohead. They excite us.

You also hooked up with Dizzee Rascal?
Yeah, he is another interesting MC with something to say. We thought that we should get him in and this was before he recorded an album. He just won the Mercury Prize yesterday. All the people on the album just sort of happened casually. Like JC dropped by the studio and wanted to meet us. We were working on "Plug It In," so we asked him to throw down some vocals and believe it or not, it was quite good. Oh, I've got to go. Can I call you back in a few minutes?

[Calls back]

Getting back to collaborations; I've always been scared of Siouxsie Sioux. What was meeting her like?
We still haven't met her. It was a very modern process. We sent her a track and gave her creative freedom and she just sent it back with her ideas. We did the basic track and we thought that we're big enough to contact her. And so we did and she actually knew us. So she was down with it.

Why did you get into dance music initially? I'm not so averse with the dance music scene, but I'm assuming that when you were growing up most dance music was cheesy.
Well, in England, dance music was truly underground. And that music truly excited me. I remember being 17 being in my Mom's Mini and I remember hearing [singing] 'it takes two to make a thing go right...' and I just screamed out 'whooo-yeah!'

You talked about how house music was underground and how it came from America.
I remember hearing "House Nation" and we were all listening to it and it was so repetitive and strange. We thought it was music from another planet.

It's odd how dance music is reversed. Dance music is now mainstream in England and in America it's become more underground.
And hip-hop in England is still underground, but here it's huge. But we're happier that we're underground because we can experiment and do things differently, throw out the book of rules. ///