FEATURE:
Jump ‘N Shout
Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Basement Jaxx’s Remedy
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RELEASED a day after my sixteenth birthday…
a wonderful album came into the world on 10th May, 1999. At a time when Dance music was quite stale and colourless, Basement Jaxx arrived with Remedy. Its title is very apt: it is a remedy to the pallid and generic Dance and Electronic that was present at the end of the 1990s. There is not as much publicity and features about this album as there should be. Considering how significant it was. Regardless, as it is coming up to its twenty-fifth anniversary, it worth spotlighting and saluting this album. Basement Jaxx are the London duo of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe. When Remedy was being made, the duo felt that Dance music was close-minded and linear. A sorry state of affairs that they wanted to challenge. Lacking feeling and having this robotic and soulless quality, what they wanted to do was to bring depth and diversity to a scene in danger of becoming irrelevant. Tackling the superficial nature of Dance at the time, you get this togetherness and anthemic quality on Remedy. So many different styles and sounds weaving through the songs. It is such a confident debut album that does what it intended to do: shake up and transform the Dance scene. For that reason, we need to make a properly big deal of Remedy’s upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary. I will bring some reviews in. Its lead single, Red Alert, was released on 19th April, 1999. That was during my final year of high school, and I recall the song being played at my prom – though the experience was not all that happy and memorable!
Regardless, this stunning song introduced us to an album (and duo) like no other. It was a huge moment. With some well-chosen samples and some brilliant vocalists, Remedy has this feeling of a cast album. Like this very diverse and intriguing musical with different players and scenes. Songs designed to get people together and bonded. Even though there are some darker and harder moments, they blend beautifully with the vigour, fizz and carnival explosion you get elsewhere. In 2019, Stereogum marked twenty years of a Dance classic. They chart how Basement Jaxx’s Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe came together and started making music. Why their debut album is an undeniable classic:
“Check your attitude at the door, and throw your coat on the floor.” This was Basement Jaxx’s house motto through the 1990s, from their first night in the back of a rundown Mexican restaurant under a railway bridge in Brixton, London, to the improved digs of neighborhood clubs like the Junction. Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe made the Jaxx name, both their Basement Jaxx nights and their Atlantic Jaxx label, on a consciously unpretentious pursuit of dance pleasure. After five years that established their profile, when too much attitude started coming through the door, they stayed true to their word and moved on.
“It became the cool place to go,” Ratcliffe told Rolling Stone in the fall of 1999. “Before, we could just play the music we wanted. That disappeared. Everyone started coming with this attitude of ‘You’re cool, let’s see what you can do.'” Pulling up stakes once the too-hip onlookers show up might be anti-snobbery as its own kind of snobbery, but Basement Jaxx also had other things on their mind. Having steadily put out a series of EPs from ’94 to ’97, as well as the attention-catching singles “Samba Magic” (1995) and “Fly Life” (1997), it was time to boldly go where other contemporary electronic music duos like Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers had recently gone before: mainstream.
The state of rock music in 1999 was uneven, and too much of it was stuck in a rut. Judging by the music press’ reception of Remedy, Basement Jaxx’s debut album released in early May of that year — 20 years ago today — dance music wasn’t faring much better. Could one artist turn the tide? “Basement Jaxx are the saviours of British house music,” declared Uncut that June. “Simple as that.” Well then. Such statements would have rung like hollow hyperbole if they weren’t coming from all sides. “More fun than Fatboy Slim, more creative than the Chemical Brothers,” affirmed Entertainment Weekly — not exactly the house aficionado’s magazine of choice, but that was the point, to invite everyone.
Buxton and Ratcliffe were indeed consciously offering a cure. Elaborating on the title to Uncut, Buxton called the album, “a remedy for all the kind of misery we’ve been having in the last few years…. All the boring generic samey club music, and all the music saying ‘We’re bored, and we’ve got no hope and there’s no way out.’ We’re saying we’re glad to be alive and everything’s cool, don’t worry.” That sentiment dovetailed with the message of what was then their most recent single, “Red Alert”; its verse “Don’t worry/ Don’t panic/ Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on but history” sought to soothe the pre-millennium tension coursing through the general populace at the time.
As far as house history goes, though they may have been as much saboteurs of purism as they were saviors of the party, Basement Jaxx respected it. “This album came about as an attempt to recapture the feeling, energy, and soul of classic Chicago and New York house music,” they told Billboard that summer. “Our songs evolved from there.” Where others wanted to replicate the details, Basement Jaxx sought to recapture the broader joy, while also making their dissatisfaction with the current state of the scene known to anyone who asked.
“In the beginning we were just trying to be House producers,” Ratcliffe told The Wire as Remedy was preparing for release. “Now we’re trying not to be House producers.” Basement Jaxx coined the term ‘punk garage’ for themselves, but even though Remedy was put out by XL Recordings, then most popularly known as home to the Prodigy, they didn’t sport mohawks and use distorted guitars like their new labelmates. Their application of punk was the anything-goes spirit (going with ‘garage’ over ‘house’ seemed more about making the witty word switch than identifying with one close style over the other) and the eclecticism they espoused, which might have even made it more a kind of post-punk garage.
As if to make a point right away about that eclecticism; that, despite the “electronica is the new rock ‘n’ roll” talk of the late ’90s, dance didn’t need to replace or be defined in opposition to anything else, one of the very first instruments on Remedy is a guitar. Albeit an acoustic Spanish guitar, but still there’s potential for finding a symbolic gesture pointing either direction in the way that “Rendez-Vu” flicks a couple of Castilian chords in circles until it drops the guitar and drops in the beat. Whether it means anything or not — ‘guitars welcome,’ ‘guitars stand aside’ — is less relevant than Remedy establishing its cleverness upfront without prioritizing it above having a good time. It’s deep house; not deep in its mood, but utilizing intellectual depth.
That so much of the buzz around Remedy had to do with Basement Jaxx’s ability to write songs that sounded like real songs, as opposed to over-repetitive techno tracks, shows the kind of expectations Buxton and Ratcliffe were exploiting. Though their Surrender that year would mix things up more, even electro-titans like the Chemical Brothers had up until then released albums that largely functioned as an idealized hour of their set sliced into skippable segments. Remedy had full stops and all manner of rhythms, not just BPM increases and decreases. It also offered up jarring juxtapositions — such as the crunching stomp, telephone ring and calmly delivered goth metal lyrics (“You were a prophet from above/ Then you came and sucked my blood/ My pain became my strength/ I am reborn…”) of “Yo Yo” — and made the unnatural feel organic.
Its focus on songwriting over function also meant that, unlike so much purpose-built dance music both then and now, Remedy didn’t call for chemical enhancement. Every song was so ripe with detail, if you were on something you might miss your favorite bit. Basement Jaxx weren’t really anti- anything, but drugs didn’t have much if any role in their process. Clubbing in the ’90s, their release was just to “dance as hard as possible.” Again, for all their right moves and right connections with the likes of Daft Punk, Armand Van Helden and other notables, this kind of difference helped cement their outsider self-image. “I never thought we’d have commercial success at the beginning,” Buxton told the Guardian in 2005. “What we were doing seemed very off to the side of what mainstream culture was into. It was nothing to do with the British dance scene, which was very much about cocaine.”
It was nothing to do with it, until it was. “…Basement Jaxx have spun the whole British dance scene upside down,” Rolling Stone informed America in August of 1999 when Remedy landed via Astralwerks, who also handled the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim. Remedy didn’t quite produce a “Praise You” or “Setting Sun” crossover hit in the US, but Basement Jaxx had already been embraced by the dance world here. “Red Alert” was a genuine number one hit on the Dance Music/Club Play chart, and “Rendez-Vu” and “Bingo Bango” followed suit. Remedy’s durable shelf-life made it a record that kept attracting the kind of newcomers who only had a few scattered big beat CDs in their collection. The growth of their live show — not just two dudes behind a table but an invigorating, genuine performance with a live band, singers, and dancers — made an increasing impression as well.
Two years later, Rooty, their sophomore album, would capitalize on the attention Remedy had both gradually earned and had thrust upon it, and Basement Jaxx were on their way to being festival headliners. If musical influence is measured in how many artists follow in another’s footsteps then the breadth of their legacy is up for debate, but the nature of their approach made them nearly an impossible act to follow. What’s more, Basement Jaxx’s mission from the start had been to get free of the constraints of reverential homage, so the most appropriate respect to pay them would be to do your own thing. Remedy certainly did”.
I am going to get to some reviews now. At the time, when there was so much hype following the release and success of Red Alert, many might have been cynical and sceptical. This hot new duo tipped as the next big thing. Basement Jaxx definitely silenced critics. They more than lived up to the hype. NME addressed this in their review of Remedy in 1999:
“It's so easy to hate, to fear the Jaxx. Flick through their CV and read the kiss of death, those dreaded six words: The Best New Band In Britain. Discover that they've been called the British Daft Punk, as if that was a positive thing, and weep. Who are these bastards?
It's not hard to find out: their stern faces are everywhere, on every magazine cover. And in these magazines you can find out about their legendary club that, oops, doesn't exist any more, about how many cool American DJs think they're cool too, about Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton's boho, edgy Camberwell lifestyle, about their degrees in engineering and languages, about how they've invented 'punk garage'... and, yes, these are all fair, knee-jerk reasons to hate Basement Jaxx. 'Remedy', however, is not.
Indeed, 'Remedy' is probably as good a dance album (and that's dance as in, have a dance) as anyone from these Isles has produced this decade. Hate them that little bit more now? Come on, fight it. Imagine, instead, that you're fiddling through the radio band looking for something that, for a change, consistently surprises and lifts you. 'Remedy' is that pirate. It's a wonderful new frequency where house, ragga, techno, soul, funk... Jesus, flamenco are all mashed together and it feels like some kind of perfect moment.
It's a soundtrack that starts frantically in the dead of night and progresses to a peaceful, if disoriented dawn. Here is beautifully melodic dance music that's free of pretensions, but rammed with bold intelligence; that hits you as hard in the guts as it does in the feet. It's an excellent ride.
It starts unconventionally with the folk techno barrage of 'Rendez-Vu', all flamenco guitars, vocoder and romantic longing, and really doesn't look back. Marvel at 'Jump'n'Shout''s heads-down/hands-up ragga nuttiness (MC Slarta quite rightly scorning those who, "never did know the rules/They never did go to Basement Jaxx school"). Laugh at the genius of turning The Selecter's 'On My Radio' into a punky hip-hop anthem on 'Same Old Show'. And wonder how Goldie can ever make another concept album now that his whole long-playing career has been so economically condensed into 'Always Be There''s spun-out six minutes.
These are some of the peaks on an album that really - save for 'Bingo Bango''s over-exuberant Latino outburst - doesn't have any dips. In fact 'Remedy' describes itself accurately. Maybe it will cure the British dance disease of confusing intelligence with a need to journey up its own arse, and it highlights, once again, that musical boundaries are only there to be blurred. Above all, though, it blasts your petty prejudices clean out of the water.
9/10”.
I sort of think Dance and Electronic music is starting to return to what it was like pre-Remedy. Not that it is lifeless. It lacks a certain inspiration and originality. I wonder whether, twenty-five years after Basement Jaxx’s debut album was released, there is a team, duo or producer waiting to unleash something as needed and instantly captivating. We can only hope. This is what AllMusic observed in their review:
“The duo's long-awaited debut album is one of the most assured, propulsive full-lengths the dance world had seen since Daft Punk's Homework. A set of incredibly diverse tracks, Remedy is indebted to the raw American house of Todd Terry and Masters at Work, and even shares the NuYoricans' penchant for Latin vibes (especially on the horn-driven "Bingo Bango" and the opener, "Rendez-Vu," which trades a bit of salsa wiggle with infectious vocoderized disco). True, Ratcliffe and Buxton do sound more like an American production team than a pair of Brixton boys would -- they get props (and vocal appearances) from several of the best American house producers out there including DJ Sneak, Erick Morillo, and Benji Candelario. And "U Can't Stop Me" is an R&B production that could probably have gotten airplay in major rap markets across the U.S. Elsewhere, Buxton and Ratcliffe chew up and spit out mutated versions of hip-hop, ragga, Latin, R&B, soul, and garage -- the varied sound that defined the worldwide house scene of the late '90s”.
I wonder whether anything will be written about Remedy ahead of its twenty-fifth anniversary. It warrants more than it has received. If you do not own the album then I would advise you to do so. I am going to finish with The A.V. Club and their thoughts regarding a stunningly vibrant and imaginative debut album from Basement Jaxx. So original and exciting, it has not dated at all. Such is the quality and authenticity, you can play the album now and it will connect with people:
“When people criticize dance music for sounding interchangeable, there's sadly a whole lot of truth to the accusation. Racism and homophobia certainly played a small part in the sort-of death of disco, but Americans ultimately just got sick of the same old shit. While there's plenty of creativity inherent in the DJ set, which has continued to nurture disco under the more specialized wings of house and techno, much of it seems stifled by short-term or simpleminded artistic goals. Laziness and unwillingness to take risks are the two biggest banes of the techno boom; even an average DJ can command thousands of dollars a night as long as the dancers stay happy. Basement Jaxx has seized upon this chink in the armor of house music. Knowing that it takes only a few novel elements to stick out from the homogenous crowd of disco anthem-generators, Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe have gone all out to do for house music what Daft Punk did for, well, house music. Calling its music "punk garage"—a term obviously ripe with meaning for Buxton and Ratcliffe, perhaps meaningful for avid trainspotters, and utterly meaningless to the layman—Basement Jaxx takes the basic four-on-the-floor house-music template and turns it on itself. The duo's self-proclaimed "remedy" is nowhere near as revolutionary as the hype would insinuate, and Spin has already inexplicably named Remedy one of the 90 best albums of the '90s, but it does offer its distinct pleasures. In a field of mediocrity, a little effort goes a long way, and the presence of flamenco guitars on "Rendez-Vu" and skittering, Timbaland-style beats on "U Can't Stop Me" help Basement Jaxx stand out. For the BPM-minded, the retro single "Red Alert" has more than enough faux funk and chic camp to keep the masses moving, proving that Buxton and Ratcliffe know well enough to think with their feet as well as their heads”.
On 10th May, the mighty Remedy is twenty-five. It arrived at a very big and interesting time in my life. I will always have a special attachment to it. With monster hits such as Red Alert sitting alongside lesser-heard treasures like Stop 4 Love, this is an album to get lost in. One that you can play at a party and get people on the dancefloor. One where, from the first song in, people will join together and…
JUMP and shout.