Basement Jaxx
Kids these days can’t sit still–and neither can their music. Look what’s happened to the stodgiest of electronic-dance styles, house. Used to be that once house producers had a groove established, it stayed in place, for four, five, six, seven minutes at a time. Sure, they’d monkey with it–one strain, acid house, was built on sounds made by constantly playing with the pitch shifters of an outmoded analog synthesizer, the Roland TB-303. But house tracks–even underground, “experimental” ones–mostly tended to stay a recognizable course: once you heard what was on top at the beginning of the tune (and I mean at the beginning of the tune–most house tracks open and close with a minute or so of pure beat, in deference to their function as DJ tools), you could pick it out all the way through.
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But in the past few years–as with R & B, the music whose upscale aspirations house most often emulates–some seriously, gratifyingly weird shit has been flying out of the laboratory. What’s more, it’s actually attracting attention, putting asses in seats and moving units. London has witnessed the delirious boom of speed garage (house infused with jungle) and the subsequent emergence of twitchy, hypersyncopated two-step garage–more a variant on Timbaland’s itchy-feet production style than a continuation of house’s straight four-four. But the most visible exponents of the new house are Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton, a pair of south Londoners who call themselves Basement Jaxx.
I don’t know whether Remedy as a whole will meet with the same level of acceptance, though given Astralwerks’s promotional diligence, I wouldn’t be surprised if the album slowly went platinum, a la Fatboy Slim. But even if their success is short-lived, Basement Jaxx are in the unique position of embodying one of the most exciting scenes going right now–and hopefully they portend even more exciting mutations to come.
