Basement Jaxx

Basement Jaxx have been pushing the groove barrier since 1994, with their alchemy of disco, Brazillian, jazz, ambient and everything else to make heads and toes spin in synchronicity on the dance floor. Their full-length debut, Remedy, is sophisticated and sweet like the music of Masters At Work, but the uniqueness of its sound comes from the British duo's penchant for noise-as-funk. With vocoder-vocals that sound like gremlins ("Yo-Yo"), bass lines that scratch against your senses ("Don't Give Up"), and some steely strumming on an acoustic guitar ("Rendez-Vu"), the album often sounds like its been produced with pieces of electronic debris, wired together with the pulse of pre-millennial anxiety. Such tensions are also evident in the lyrics, like on "U Can't Stop Me" when Yvonne John-Lewis strikes her pose with fierce lines like: "I'm a scary mothafucka /I'm the future on a spring/I got 16 seconds and I don't wanna stop/I got no time for the present living on a spinning top." Responding to the pressures of our times, Remedy is in many ways like the house music countdown to the end of 1999. However, whereas similar records by Cassius and Stardust evoke posh scenes of clubbers dancing on ecstasy to escape their fears of Y2K on New Year's Eve, Basement Jaxx prophesise visions of illegal block parties in the street, celebrating the beginning of time on the day after. The sentiment is most vibrant on "Red Alert," when diva Blue James feverishly declares: "Don't worry, don't panic/Ain't nothing goin' on but history/But it's alright… And the music just keeps playing on and on." Her promises are kept when the album segues into more sensuous realms like "Always Be There" (featuring Monday Michiru) and the electronic soul-ballad "Being With You." With these cycles of fever and healing, Remedy is definitely worth the taking.