[HKClubbing]

“People tend to bury their heads in the sand but I think we’re already suffering; we’re about to enter a recession because fuel costs are going through the roof and it’s restricting trade.”

Chatting to Skrufff several weeks ago just before the world’s stock markets collapsed Faithless star Sister Bliss was only partially accurate in her prophesy, given that the chaos means oil prices (at least temporarily) have dropped. However, raising the issue in an earlier (non Skrufff) interview she spoke ‘of plunging into the most unthinkable global catastrophes of our own making which we will experience in this lifetime’, with global warning her greatest concern.

“Climate change will cause it,” she suggests, “I think it’s inevitable.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re buying a hybrid car or whatever, we have already set the wheels in motion and we’re ignoring it at our peril.

All we can do is to need less. We wrote a song called “I Want More” and is about this feeling that nothing is ever enough. The environment is suffering because of this attitude and I know the contradiction because I fly to gigs, but what I mean is government not taking the big measures, and I blame them especially for not listening. Though of course it could happen due to other factors not caused by humans such as a Ice Age or meteor strike,” she warns, “What I believe though is that it is inevitable.”

Despite her end-is-nigh assessment, she admits the happiest period of her 15 year career as both pop star and globe trotting DJ is the present, not least as Faithless’ often derided socially conscious lyrics have increasingly been reflected by the mainstream.

“The last year of touring has been very enjoyable, when I had the baby. I particularly felt that Maxi’s message was more powerful than ever before and it needed to be heard,” she says.

“One of the things that convinced me was when we did a show in Berlin with an amazing artist called Emmanuel Jal, a Sudanese musician and former child soldier, and it was just incredible. We had to do this press panel for Oxfam, because the gig was for Oxfam, and it was so moving. When we performed that night I could see in Max’s eyes that he really connected with Emmanuel and with the whole situation and he really felt every lyric that we’d ever written, however slagged off we might have been by all the various critics. They called us ‘wordy’, ‘preachy’… what can I say, to me it was really resonant. The meaning was there and it made me understand that I never want to make any music without meaning; there’s enough of it out there already. To me it felt that all the hard work had come to something, that finally it meant something.”

Faithless talk aside, she’s chatting to Skrufff’s Benedetta Ferraro to promote her new mix compilation Nightmoves, a project she stresses is an equally high priority.

“It’s important because I only want to put out things I really like and I’m really proud of, and since I don’t do compilations very often, in the infinitesimal world of the things I care about, it’s important,” she says.

“It’s also nice for me to do something like this because I’m always busy on the road with Faithless and I think people sometimes forget that I’m also a DJ. I’ve been DJing a lot recently, now that my baby is a bit older, I did Ibiza and various festivals and I’ve been enjoying it enormously. There are not enough people playing the best music out there and I personally want people out there to know that house music is still great and there are some fantastic tunes out there.”


Skrufff (Benedetta Ferraro): How important are compilations these days for maintaining’ your DJ profile: how much are you actively working on doing that generally?

Ayalah (Sister Bliss): “For me, they are less important, for other DJs hugely important. You also have to remember that I’m part of a globally successful band, one of the five in the world that have sold any records. We’re known literally from Timbuktu to Thailand, we have lots of fans all over the place, so in a way if I’m put up for DJing somewhere they also have something to promote the gigs with due to the global presence of the band. Promoting myself as a DJ is obviously very important, but what’s even more important to me right now, is to put out a **** great solo record, something I haven’t done yet. It’s my own fault. I’ve done lots and lots of bits and pieces but I haven’t finished anything yet. That would really be the next piece of news.”

Skrufff: How easy was it to decide to have a baby: did you ever consider having to give up DJing/ making music for the baby?

Ayalah (Sister Bliss): “Not easy in the slightest, but people do say that there’s never a ‘right time’. But you know, at the time I just came off touring, I knew I definitely wasn’t going to work for a little while. We thought maybe we should have a go. I was thirty-five. I thought it would have definitely taken at least a year, if not two. I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly, but also so madly, in the middle of a year off which it would have worked really well if we wouldn’t have been asked to headline the V Festival. We kept saying no, but they kept insisting that they really needed us to do it. We couldn’t turn it down, although I was eight and a half months pregnant and with two weeks to go. They literally had ambulances ready on the sides of the stage.

I continued DJing until I was seven months pregnant though, but after that I started feeling uncomfortable flying and I would also feel very tired. But you know, life goes on. You think everything is going to change and you get ready for it. I feel really, really lucky that I’m able financially to bring up this child. I’m with the person I love and luckily we found out we could do it. Oh, and we love him so much. He’s a rave baby, comes DJing around the world with me and accompanies me on the tour bus. We started working again when he was six months old and it didn’t feel that it was a bad thing to do because I  was with him everyday anyway. We’ve been to Russia together and up to the Great Wall of China and he just loved it. He’s a very sociable baby; he likes hanging out with everybody. 

The great thing about having a night job is that the baby is in bed when I’m out working. I feel so lucky. So many people have to struggle with childcare or having to go back to an office job, all that pressure, it really is not easy to have a baby in this country, even if you earn good money. Maternity pay is sh*t. It’s expensive in every way, you don’t think it would be because children are so small but it is. I feel very blessed that is has happened now that I’m more established and financially more secure, as if it would have happened in my twenties it wouldn’t have been a good time at all.”

Skrufff: It seems like you’ve had success constantly through your career: have you ever experienced any crisis of confidence/ or lost faith?

Ayalah (Sister Bliss): “Ah, it would look like I’m confident to the outside world but I’m constantly thinking ‘no, this is sh*t, we’re not good enough’ and so on. Absolutely. And, you know, there have been periods when I wasn’t working very much. I remember when I was DJing at Café De Paris and everything was going great then suddenly everything fell apart. I didn’t really have many gigs in London and that’s really the reason why I started making records, because I didn’t feel any security coming from DJing. I couldn’t survive on £30 every three weeks, I just couldn’t. Then, after that really tough period things started taking off, what can I say, extremely hard work did pay off and it was the same with Faithless.

We had gigs with literally five people in the audience, thinking ‘this is just diabolical, how are we ever going to get people to come and see us?’ Also, remember we were on a very small label with nobody really there to promote us, so all the promotion we did was done the hard way. We had success in many ways, but it took a long time before we had a proper hit. I remember our first record selling five copies a week. Well, they say if it comes too easy it’s not worth having.”

“Even today though, I feel we have to come out with something really exceptional. I feel like that every time though, that’s the kind of person I am. There’s a lot of good music but there’s also a lot of sh*t music out there that I really feel I want to stand out from the crowd. I’d rather make something brilliant or not do anything at all if it has to be mediocre. Like Richie Hawtin, he’s been so minimal lately, he’s like ‘let’s just not release any records’! I like that manifesto! He did a week of silence or something, making a proper statement. Just being quiet for a week and think about not releasing any records.”

Skrufff: You’re the only member of Faithless who’s been mega successful as a DJ: has it prompted many conflicts of interest?

Ayalah (Sister Bliss): “Not really. I have to accept that the good of the many has to overcome the good of the few. When the band is touring everybody knows that the band has to come first, I might do a little gig here and there but Faithless is my priority. There’s a lot to do, especially now we’ve had the baby on tour, plus we still do all the promotion every day for a couple of hours before the show, then we do the show which for me is never a finished product because at the end of it I listen to it again to see if there’s anything that can be improved or that should be changed, since as you know, I musically direct the show, So trying to prepare a set in the middle of all this at the same time it would just kill me. Something’s got to give in the end.”

Skrufff: Has your solo success ever provoked any envy in the band?

Ayalah (Sister Bliss): “I don’t know, I’ve never asked. I don’t think so though, everyone has a great sense of themselves, I think, and I also think we complement each other amazingly well. We are a generous spirited outfit. Not that one has ever said though. Maxi is a DJ anyway, he’s not into the mega thing though, he likes playing his hip hop in small clubs in Brixton, he’s also fifty-one years old now. He’s not a kid anymore and he’s got nothing to feel envious about. It’s not in his personality anyway, he’s a Buddhist and he really lives his life as a Buddhist.”

Skrufff: What do you make of today’s celebrity culture: have you ever gone to places like the Ivy restaurant? Or been followed by paparazzi?

Ayalah (Sister Bliss): “That’s a lot of nonsense, isn’t it. It’s just never interested me. If I go out, I go to the cinema, the theatre or to a club for dancing. If I go to a club, I go to hear great music not because I want to **** a footballer, although some of them have got nice legs. Maxi gets recognised a bit, but we were never that kind of band. We never sold sex or an image. Our video for “Insomnia” came out a year after the record did. We never get that kind of attention; we’re too old; Too old and too ugly.”
 
Skrufff: many of the top superstar DJs are now approaching 50 (or are over 50): how much does age matter for DJing: is it more of an issue for female performers?

Ayalah (Sister Bliss): “I just think it’s a question of lifestyle in the first place. You must be able to sustain it; it’s hard on the body, harder if you have a family life. I’m not complaining, but you spend a lot of times inside airports, flying, staying up late. For me, especially now that I have a baby I have to try and stay healthy, because I have been ill before and the DJing has only made it worst. I cannot push it anymore and for me now it’s more a question of finding the balance. Age has got nothing to do with it; in a way I think the older you are the more experience you have. Age doesn’t mean you’re out of touch because I like most things that many twenty year olds like. They have no idea of what the beginning of Acid House was like and how special, amazing and crazy it all was but they’re having their own experiences. These days it’s a lot more homogeneous and ages are kind of blurred.”

Sister Bliss Nightmoves is out now on Pieces Of Eight.

Interview by Benedetta Ferraro (Skrufff.com)

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