Photo

Soundbites

Andrew Lee
Published: Thursday, October 23, 2003

Basement Jaxx “Kish Kash” Astralwerks

This album isn’t quite the house music with which your older brother grooved along, which means it isn’t quite the house music this famed duo touted toward the end of last century. The third straight masterstroke by Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton dishes out ear candy in handfuls and at such unforgiving speeds that everything sounds lighter, brighter and more supremely blissed out. In terms of progress, for the Jaxx it’s not about moving forward or backward, but moving forward, backward, up, down, sideways and squiggly as fast as your stereo and booty can handle.

At 14 tracks, even the filler segues don’t sound like fillers. And it should be noted that the preening no-name vocalists who pepper the songs belt out the tunes with as much fearless swagger as the stars who also drop by (Dizzee Rascal, Siouxsie Sioux, *NSYNC’s J.C. Chasez), which says more about the ability of a Jaxx track to enlarge even the tinniest vox than about the duo’s ability to tap into untapped talent. Listen to the first track, “Good Luck,” the greatest kiss-off anthem of the new millennium, and try to convince yourself that Lisa Kekaula isn’t belting out just about 20 years of pent-up vitriol in a four-and-a-half-minute flurry of skitterish beats, bubbly synths and fake strings.

Their formula is so simple – no build-up to a climax, just constant bliss – that you could almost fault them for their consistency. But it is the kind of consistency that’ll make you get up and dance.

– Andrew Lee