Soundbites
By Andrew Lee
Oct. 22, 2003 9:00 p.m.
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
