Am interviewing Basement Jaxx tomorrow, if anyone wants any questions answered...

I suppose the biggest question is if they were surprised/disappointed at the commercial results for Kish Kash at home -- that's not an easy question and I certainly wouldn't lead off with it, but I would be interested in their thoughts.

(ok I wasn't going to post that but around Nutty Nigel I just don't feel like such an asshole)

(this is where I go and weep over my essay all night, come back in the morning and get cheered up by collective Jaxx enthusiasm)

Rah!

you realise that there is one already, yeah?

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDSUB040401240228071306&sql=Algjc7ia3g78r

if so, yeah, i have most of what's on it, but there's been soooo much since.

See, purely cos I believe what I read on ILM (more fule i), I assumed Kish Kash had stiffed in the UK. But I've recently discovered it's sold at least 100,000 copies, fact. I've seen the framed disc thing and everything. That sure ain't stiffing in my "book".

Why do they think that there are so many acts that clearly imitated Daft Punk's sound, but no-one that really seems to imitate theirs?

And yeah - Do I smell?

If I listed everyone I want them to work with...

Thanks to all. I'd quite like to ask them how much clout they actually have in the industry re: guest vocalists - can they actually get who they want most times, or would say Beyoncé be out of the question? And there's the perception of JC as the well-we-couldn't-get-JT choice (though in retrospect JC works better).

They beat the hell out of Muse, mind.

Hmmmm. That's disappointing.

yes i think Simon & Felix were very disappointed about it as well but i guess it was just down to contractual obligatory conflicts or somesuch mumbo-jumbo

This isn't the article I wrote - that was for a local listings mag and just 320 words so doesn't go into as much detail as it could have. I'll be rewriting and expanding it for the student rag, but closer to the time.

(these aren't in any order, I just randomly c/ped the questions I got to ask from this thread)

are they doing any sort of club night now? do they ever plan to again?

Definitively not on Simon's part; he doesn't DJ any more. He says that Felix still DJs, but I think they feel that they've left that behind somewhat.

how important is camberwell, aesthetically, to their music at this point? or have they totally "gone global"?

A lot of the 'global' sound was partly due to the guest vocalists; whereas in the past they'd just rung unestablished friends from home up and got them to sing, using singers as forceful as the ones they did forced them to build around their voices more. Simon talked a lot about their motivation to make a record which sounded freer and unconstrained.

I asked about the pop aesthetic behind Kish Kash too - for the first time they didn't record with the intention of clubbing in mind, as they felt that that was a constraint of sorts.

I suppose the biggest question is if they were surprised/disappointed at the commercial results for Kish Kash at home

Simon didn't seem too concerned about it - I think they think that "Plug It In" will be the massive hit, and I can see why they think that. When I asked whether he thought that Kish Kash's thus far sub-par performance was reflective of dance music's waning popularity (I tried ever so hard not to sound like one of Petridish's "dance is dead" articles here) Simon surprisingly agreed! He thinks a lot of dance music has become lazy because it's been appropriated by the mainstream and that it doesn't sound fresh anymore. "The end of a generation, the end of a phase." I'd've loved to pursue this because it's a load of bollocks, but that was the last question and I ran out of time :( He did talk about BJ putting their own stamp on it by retreating into their own sphere though.

Another one -- how do they know when to stop with their arrangements? They pack so much in that they obviously have to draw a line somewhere along the way -- how do they judge it? Or do they even see it that way at all?

I don't think they see it this way at all, Simon was a bit confused by this question. Apparently it's usually the record company which tells them when a track is fine! It does seem to be very influenced by outside opinion at any rate.

Ask them why they use multiple vocalists on their records? Would they consider working with a single vocalist on their own records or maybe producing for someone outside the BJ banner?

They've never seen the multiple vocalists as particularly important pre-Kish Kash - they were literally people whom Felix and Simon rang up and whose voices had to be "moulded" to fit the track. Lisa Kekaula was the first name vocalist - they'd heard through word of mouth that the BellRays were great and they should check them out, and it snowballed from there. It's both a challenge - because they have to construct the music around the vocals more - and easier, because they don't have to train the name vocalists at all - "just like working with another instrument". They tried to get PRINCE and MISSY ELLIOTT on the album and ARE STILL TRYING!!!!!!!! (Unsurprising but still exciting.)

I asked about replacing such strong, distinctive voices live - the tour vocalists are local unestablished artists as before, but they all make the song their own in the context of the live performance - apparently the girl who sings "Cish Cash", Charlotte, is amazing. According to Simon anyway. But if Siouxsie Sioux agreed to tour they'd say yes in a shot.

a. Her surname ain't 'Church'.
b. She's super-hotter than Siouxsie, in fact, super-hotter than anyone wearing a lether catsuit on stage could fathomably be.
c. She both echoes Siouxsie and makes the song her own. The catsuit may have something to do with that tho'.