Review Summary: For Tomorrow: A Guide to Contemporary British Music, 1988-2013 (Part 43)
The best Basement Jaxx songs are like living organisms, they begin meek, grow to overwhelming proportions, and end too soon. What Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton know is that, like a living organisms, a song’s needs and wants change on a second to second basis. What might have seemed over the top and garish during the first verse can feel just right during the bridge. Song’s are emotional journeys in their hand, packed full of as many joyous elements they can hold. What they do is incredibly difficult and nobody does it like they do, they know when they’ve hit the absolute limit of what a song can contain. Even at their most maximum stacked overload, you couldn't imagine even one single element removed. The Jaxx are risk takers, their music constantly skirts embarrassment but always ends up feeling giddy and free. From a violin solo to a lawnmower breakdown, anything can happen in the compact span of a Basement Jaxx song.
Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton came together in London. Buxton was pulling double duty holding down an office job and throwing parties. A desire to make his own dance tracks brought him to Ratcliffe’s studio, where Ratcliffe charged him 10 pounds an hour to use his equipment. They got to chatting, found a mutual interest in the more complicated house stylings of New York and Chicago house. A bond was formed and the two started putting music together in between school and work commitments while dj’ing parties at the same time. A run of singles from 94 to 97 landed them a deal on XL, when their debut arrived in 99 it fired straight to number one on the album charts and spawned 4 top 20 singles (Including 3 US Dance number 1’s).
Dance music tends to focus on the repetitious “THOOM-THOOM-THOOM” of the kick to the exclusion of everything around it. Basement Jaxx are much more concerned with the little details.
Remedy is informed more by latin rhythms and UK garage/funky than being simply crowd pleasers. The Jaxx are overachievers in a genre that doesn't demand much beyond lining the kicks up correctly. With
Remedy, they drew upon the knowledge and skill gleamed during their days moving crowds in the basement and compacted deep house grooves into pop friendly 3 minute bursts. House demands a degree of patience that works better on a dance floor where it’s more important to establish a groove than keep the audience entertained. On the other hand, Basement Jaxx songs demand no patience whatsoever. Most of the songs on
Remedy sound like 3 or 4 pop songs stripped of chaff and smashed together.
Opener “Rendez-Vu” doubles down on a frenetic acoustic guitar riff and vocoded vocals. It’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” with the emphasis on “Wolf”. The song only cycles a select few lines (“I got you in my heart I got you in my hand/Your magic it surrounds me”) but it’s the repetition of these lines that make the song more menacing and frenetic as it progresses. By the end of the song, “Let’s make a rendez-vu” sounds less like a request and more like a threat. “Yo-Yo” and “U Can’t Stop Me” are the best indicators of where Jaxx picked up the term “punk-garage” with their feedback stricken grooves and samples that have been through the tumble dryer a few times. “Bingo Bango” is the purest example of the Jaxx’s latin influences with it’s wickedly fun horn line giving away to an out of nowhere piano solo. The euphoric “Red Alert” anchors itself with a bonkers slap bass line while the rest of the song goes all over the place, the effect is akin to the Jaxx recording the song in the middle of Mardi Gras and leaving the studio door open, letting anyone wander in to contribute.
Remedy is a flat out tour-de-force, a show stopping debut that flirts with perfection but doesn't quite hit the mark. For one, as confident as
Remedy is, the Jaxx weren't quite certain where they wanted to take their sound yet. It’s also not as well sequenced as it could be, with the highlights eclipsing lesser but still great songs like the fluorescent streak of “Stop 4 Love” and the lovely closer “Being With U”. But aside from one weak tune, the aimless “Same Old Show”, when
Remedy is on, it’s hard to deny.
And “Jump N’ Shout” is
on.
If
Remedy was 14 tracks of silence and then “Jump N’ Shout” it would still be worth the price of admission. It’s that good. When the jittering 2 step rhythm locks into the beat it’s nothing but bliss from there. MC Slarta John turns in a bewildering mic performance that scales in intensity until the chorus hits like a sledgehammer. A distorted cowbell, laser beams, “YEA YEAAAH!”, it’s all here and it all makes perfect sense. Once the song hits a bridge composed of a lawnmower, the flick of a zippo lighter, and humidity, the genius of Basement Jaxx is practically mathematically definable.
Though
Remedy had basically sealed Basement Jaxx’s legacy, by 1999 big beat was at it’s peak and about to hit a quick decline while electronica was being adopted by post-grunge acts like Bush and well on it’s way to becoming the lamest thing under the sun. The environment that had rushed Basement Jaxx to acclaim was about to turn toxic, the duo had to evolve or become extinct. They evolved.
