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Evening Standard 10th December 2003
Bawling from studio to stage
Basement Jaxx
Forum, NW5
Considering how notoriously difficult it is to get a cab to venture south of the river on a winter night, it was a surprise to find Brixton natives Basement Jaxx hosting a party in Kentish Town. Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton the duo behind the band, were touring their crunchy, tech-punk third album Kish Kash with four gigs in four corners of the ‘capital compass’.
Studio skills rarely translate on stage but Basement Jaxx’s boisterous mix of thundering beats, vivid visuals and rotating cast of animated vocalists makes them the rare exception. Lisa Kekaula, the striking singer with cult Californian rockers The Bellrays, opened the set with a rowdy rendition of forthcomign single Good Luck. It set a high-energy, maximum-impact precedent, which was met by all six guest vocalists.
Initially, Ratcliffe and Buxton thrashed about behind a wall of keyboards
and decks but as the set progressed they ventured onto guitar and microphone
respectively. Thankfully Buxton left the candy soul of Romeo to a female
as he fiddled with frequencies but he wasn’t going to let Where’s
Your Heas At? pass. The monstrous beats were set against his bawling
vocals, as the venue was shaken to its very foundations in a cathartic
eruption of energy.
Cish Cash, recorded for the album with veteran vixen Siouxsie Sioux
but performed by an anonymous guest in a PVC catsuit, revealed Jaxx’s
political edge. As they tore into the thrash-house sound collage, the
screen mocked American industrial greed and demanded ‘No More War’.
But not even those powerful senitments could keep the crowd from jumping.
Paul Clark
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NME
December 3rd 2003
Kash Bang Wallop!
Basement Jaxx in Bristol
Venue: Academy
Date: Wenesday December 3
Time onstage: 9pm
With bootleg White Stripes and renegade Bellrays, Basement Jaxx end
their year noisily
Remember 2003? The year in which tight nylon shirts and ‘proper’ guitar music sounded positively cutting edge next to those hackneyed old sampled beats of ‘yesterday’s’ electronic music? Well thank Christ that 2004 is nigh – giving us the necessary perspective to look back and say, “Actually the real musical innovation of 2003, was happening right under our noses in London’s Brixton where dance music’s scruffy everymen, Basement Jaxx, were creating an album which not only took notice of the zeitgeist but also taught it how to laugh again. Which was good.”
Basement Jaxx’s path to success is simple. First they make sure everyone in the entire room is having the night of their life. Then they turn up the rock to fever pitch. Which is why they start tonight with pending handbag-house classic ‘Good Luck’, bringing on Lisa Kekaula (big-lunged front woman with LA garage-punk shock troops The BellRays) to sing it.
On their album, the Jaxx rope in high priestess of punk Siouxise Sioux to lend her vocals to the title track ‘Kish Kash’. Siouxise can’t be here tonight, but her dominatrix double is and she wastes no time in adding a wonderful Peachesesque amateurishness to proceedings. Likewise, the feathered Brazilian dancers from the video for the camp electro-garage hi-jinx of ‘Lucky Star’ might have been dispensed with, but the futurist disco vibe sure hasn’t. In fact Basement Jaxx are so on the money tonight we can almost fogive their rave remix of ‘7 Nation Army’, especially when it’s spun against such room-exploding meltdowns as ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Where’s Your Head At?’
This year the NME has criss-crossed the globe to watch shows by the Stripes, The Strokes and The Darkness but we can confidently say that there’s still no-one who throws a party quite like the Jaxx…
Krissi Murison
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The Times December 11th 2003
Basement Jaxx prove there’s life in clubland
Basement Jaxx
Forum, NW5
It has been a dire few years in for British dance bands who grew out of the house scene. Unless, that is, you’re Basement Jaxx. Somehow the South London duo have avoided the sliding sales and passé reputation of peers such as the Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Underworld. Their current album Kish Kash, topped the charts on its release in October and gave a rare glimmer of hope that there’s still life in clubland.
Of course, you have to be clever to get a hip London crowd to stop posing and start, partying, and Basement Jaxx arrived in their home town for the first of four sold-out shows – they had booked venues north, south, east and west of the city on consecutive nights – with several aces up their sleeve. The most obvious was six superb guest vocalists. Sadly, not the big names who appear on Kish Kash – there was no Dizzee Rascal, Siouxise Sioux and Meshell Ndegeocello. But Lisa Kekaula, from LA band the Bellrays, was there to start the show with her Kish Kash track Good Luck and a fabulous short, chubby singer called Charlotte Hodson (should be Vula Malinga here) brought a huge soul vocal and infectious energy to most of the set.
Then there were the visuals – short films, animation and flashed-up images that throbbed in time to the tunes. It was like watching a computerised art exhibition curated by a speed freak. Basement Jaxx’s real ace, however, is their ability to blend countless musical styles into musical styles into manically paced, irresistibly catchy, modern disco classics. That has always been their trademark, but they’re getting better at it.
With band members Simon Ratcliffe on guitar and Felix Buxton behind keyboards and computers, plus live drums and percussion, the opener Good Luck was gritty soul-meets-frantic-funk, and Right Here’s The Spot was Prince-style skeaze-meets-big-beat, plus a steal from the Symbol’s own song, Delirous. Plug It In was sweaty-synth-pop, Lucky Star a bizarre blend of ragga, bhangra and snake-charmer sounds, Supersonic 1980s-influenced disco-funk, and Cish Cash ravey punk-garage. There were a few old favourites – Red Alert, Jump & Shout, a slowed-down Romeo and the still awesone rock-guitar-driven Where’s Your Head At? – but Basement Jaxx didn’t need to rely on past glories.
As if to prove they’re also the best DJs in the business, in mid-set Buxton and Ratcliffe sent the band off stage, got behind decks and played a DIY mix of 50 Cent’s In Da Club and the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army that got every hand in the house in the air. If you want to party like its 1991, Basement Jaxx are your band.
Lisa Verico
