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 “Winning a Grammy and headlining Glastonbury doesn’t mean that your life gets sorted out and that you don’t have problems with your relationship and your day to day life; that never goes away, it’s just your types of problems change. It’s harder to be happier with more success, definitely; you up the ante and your goal posts change.”
Ten years after he persuaded Wall Of Sound chief Mark Jones to press up 1,000 copies of an EP he and Simon Ratcliffe recorded as a hobby, Felix Buxton is one of dance culture’s most successful practitioners, and via his band Basement Jaxx a bona fide pop star. Highly intelligent and refreshingly candid, he’s also the first to admit that living the pop star dream has more than a few downsides, particularly touring. “When you tour for a long time it really does become a mission to keep your sanity,” he explains. “And then when you get home all the people you know have been carrying on with their lives and they have kind of forgotten about you, because you have forgotten about them too. If you can accept that, then that’s all fine, but you do end up living in this bubble where you’re given all your food and life is really simple, so you revert to being a kid again. It can mess with your head because your reality becomes very small; this tiny little reality. And the more lazy and the more messed up you get, the harder it becomes, I think.” “My cousin, who is a farmer, in Staffordshire, he’s about my age, he’s completely happy. He doesn’t really like going to a big city, he does it maybe go once a year. He’s got the hills, he’s got the sky, he works with animals, he loves animals and he’s really happy. All these things we worry about – have you seen that? Are you into this? Are you into that? He’s like ‘Well, no’. Chatting to Skrufff today in his Coldharbour Lane Brixton studio Felix’s words sound as bleak as the grim rain-soaked environment outside, though in reality his disposition is upbeat, friendly and positively sunny. His reason for hosting a press day is the promote their new label compilation Atlantic Jaxx 2, a 13 track label Cd featuring Latino-eclectic house fused cuts from the likes of Housebreakerz, Sharlene Hector, Gwyn Jay Allen plus no less than 6 tracks from Basement Jaxx- not that the duo are flagging them up. “Maybe we would better off doing the compilation as Basement Jaxx- The Early Years but you can spend your whole life marketing yourself,” Felix explains. “I think this CD is more like the non commercial face of Basement Jaxx really, because in reality we are a kind of chart band nowadays. We still try and keep an underground sensibility and try and keep it real and with the Atlantic Jaxx label stuff we don’t have to answer to anyone. If we like a track, we can release it, running the label allows us to keep some freedom in what we do.”
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): It’s been eight years since your first Atlantic Jaxx compilation, why so long?
Basement Jaxx: “The first compilation came out in 1997/98, then we released Basement Jaxx’ first album ‘Remedy’ in 1999 and since then we’ve been off round the world, playing everywhere with our crowds getting bigger and bigger. We’ve just been constantly really busy with Basement Jaxx so the label got left alone so much so that last year nothing happened at all, probably for the first time. We’ve actually been meaning to do this second compilation for about three years so when we finished the last lot of touring and got back here, it was like ‘OK, I think there’s enough material for the next compilation’ so I went to see the guy round the corner, got the artwork painted and that’s it really.” Skrufff: A lot of people are funding their labels through DJing, is Atlantic Jaxx a similar style project? Basement Jaxx: “Yeah, it just keeps it head above water financially really. I’ve also recently started another label called Stop Records last year, which might become a download only label and that’s very much a labour of love. It’s for those tracks that aren’t necessarily good for peak-time DJs in big clubs, those that belong to little weird places, a lot of which don’t even exist at the moment. The music on Stop is stuff that doesn’t seem to fit with the current vibes that are everywhere, and that’s been our philosophy all along. When we started Basement Jaxx, no-one was interested in what we were doing in the UK at all, we found our first interest in America and Italy, but at the time English club culture was geared to a more Euro sound and what we were doing was not what people were feeling. Then things changed around and came our way.” Skrufff: How did you go about getting started? Basement Jaxx: “With the first Basement Jaxx record, which was the very first Atlantic Jaxx release, we shrink-wrapped the copies and tried to make them look like they were imports from America. Then we actually sent them to America and Italy, people reviewed the record in magazines over there saying they thought it was American. We conned them and we conned ourselves at the beginning.” Skrufff: Were you borrowing money to fund those early releases? Basement Jaxx: “For that first EP, I approached a distribution company which was actually run by Mark Jones, who went on to set up Wall of Sound. I went there one lunchtime when I was working, actually dressed in a suit, played him a cassette and asked ‘Would you distribute this music?’ He said yes, and I said ‘I don’t have any money, would you press 500 –1000 copies?’ He said ‘Yes, I’ll press a thousand.’ They all sold and we made a bit of money on that, which we immediately put into the second release.” Skrufff: What job were you doing at the time? Basement Jaxx: “I worked at a PR company promoting products like Tupperware and John West tuna at The Good Food Show. I enjoyed it, I was going out, living in London, earning hardly anything, but I was happy,.” Skrufff: Were you telling your friends in the office at the time ‘one day I’m going to be a star?’ Basement Jaxx: “No, actually the guy that I worked with there was in a band and he was always the one that was going to make it. I just thought of making music as a hobby. I was trying to work out what to do with my life and I thought maybe I’d try and set up a design company.” Skrufff: Have you seen this guy since? Basement Jaxx: “Yeah I’m still friends with him. The singer from his band went on to do alright and ended up dumping the band. My friend is actually doing an interior design company now.” Skrufff: Where do you see club culture culture right now? Basement Jaxx: “I feel quite positive about it at the moment, it feels like it’s gone back underground again, so now bands are the (mainstream) thing. That underground vibe seems to have come back a little into dance culture, which is a real relief, because the whole big superstar DJing thing seems a bit ridiculous to me. I like a little dark sweaty room where people are really into it, where people are mixing and mashing all sorts of stuff together, like Graham Sinden who comes and DJs at the club I do, I got him to be the resident at the club because he was playing the best music I’d heard. He was working in a clothes shop in Covent Garden, but every time I went there I ended up not buying anything but listening to some of the tracks and asking what they were. He didn’t really DJ much at that point, but now he’s doing really well. A lot if the younger kids have this really refreshing approach where there’s no separation between an acid, drum & bass or R&B track. They don’t care. A lot of my generation were a lot more purist and generally anal about music, taking that attitude of ‘this is what represents me’. Get over it; music is for life and for people. I find it exciting now. The young kids don’t care about the rules. That’s really good, because the rules are just for people being snobbish, which is not good.” Skrufff: What went wrong with club music? Basement Jaxx: “I think club music got very boring which is why people started to go and see bands, because they were like ‘Actually this is a lot better, the band might not be that good but at least something’s happening’, rather than seeing people just seamlessly mixing boring dub records together with other boring dub records. I find all that so boring despite the fact I’m meant to be into house and I love good house music. IThe scene now has changed, thank God and people are also trying to bring live music into clubs too. I do a night in Brixton Inside Out and we’re always trying to get people in to do live PAs. People are really open minded right now and I think it’s the people within the industry who often get their idea of what they think is cool and tell everyone that’s what they should follow. The last time we did the club there were a hundred people queuing up outside at 9.30 and that’s how it used to be in The Basement Jaxx heyday which waqs1997. So ten years on, we’re right back at the point we were then with a new generation of people, all there dead early and ready to party- it’s great.” Skrufff: There was an article in the Independent recently saying London is the cocaine capital of the world, hat do you make of this? Basement Jaxx: “Generally I’ve noticed in the music industry it’s usually the hangers on who tend to be the ones doing coke. The great artists and people doing things often don’t do anything or they drink. I do coke very occasionally, but I remember taking it years and years ago and I went out and I saw a girl I had been seeing and I was a complete wanker to her.” Skrufff: How easy has it been for you not to go off the rails? Basement Jaxx: “I think after the second album we definitely had some problems, Simon said he didn’t want to tour again. W e got back and we were just knackered and you just start feeling really miserable. You find yourself in Detroit on a Monday night, with a cold, feeling a bit shit, so you have a vodka red bull, then after the show you need to wind down, you have few drinks, get stoned, then you wake up the next morning asking ‘where are we today?’ Your levels of enthusiasm just get sapped and sapped. It is difficult. When you tour for a long time it really does become a mission to keep your sanity.” Skrufff: People experiencing success can also experience a void . . . Basement Jaxx: “I think the last year, both for myself and Simon, we really enjoyed what we were doing for the first time. Maybe because we had the singles compilation out we thought that The Basement Jaxx will end tomorrow. We didn’t know if people would buy the singles collection either and then we got a Grammy and headlined Glastonbury, which are real pinnacle goals I suppose. Simon wasn’t originallly planning to go the Grammy’s, but his girlfriend insisted saying ‘I’m going’. So we ended up going. I think it’s taken us to this stage to make the most of it, which is, in a way, you are trying to get more of a clear head, you want to actually see what you are doing and enjoy it, rather than rushing through. I can’t remember loads of what I’ve been doing for the last however many years, because you get tired with all the constant traveling and end up f++ked up. Time passes. I want to appreciate what I’ve got in life, I want to get something out of it, because otherwise you do feel an emptiness and feel a bit lost.
I think with relationships it’s definitely hard too. Part of you is like ‘Actually there are loads of other hot girls out there as well, what should I do? What’s right for me?’ On the one hand I want security, but then that one over there is really, blah blah blah. These are just sorts of things that are most men’s dream of actually having the chance.”
Skrufff: Are you single? Basement Jaxx: “No, I’m not, but I’ve never been into the groupie thing, Friends of mine often say ‘Get into it’ but I just don’t find it attractive. Some mashed up girl who’s like ‘Oooh I really fancy you’. You’re like ‘Oh my God. Why?’ Because you’re somebody? It’s so empty. You need to get into that mood of ‘I don’t care. Yeah you copped it and it’s empty and I don’t mind’, but I can’t be like that, which is a bummer.” Atlantic Jaxx Volume 2 is out now on Atlantic Jaxx http://www.myspace.com/AtlanticJaxx Article by Jonty Skrufff (Jontyskrufff.com) Subscribe to Skrufff music newsletter at www.skrufff.com |
