Faithless are house proud

By STEPHEN JEWELL

Faithless' appearance at this year's Big Day Out was cancelled after rapper Maxi Jazz broke his pelvis in a car crash. So the London-based dance music trio, whose profile in this country has never matched their success in Europe and Australia, will be making up for lost time when they visit New Zealand for the first time next week.

Jazz will be joined on stage at the St James by Sister Bliss but not by her reclusive production partner, Rollo Armstrong - Dido's big brother - who prefers to spend his time in the studio, rarely does interviews and is not part of the Faithless live set-up.

Along with Faithless' three albums to date, Armstrong produced his little sister's multi-million-selling album No Angel. Bliss, meanwhile, has established a formidable reputation for herself as one of the world's leading female DJs, regularly playing at British super-clubs such as Renaissance.

"I fell in love with house music in 1987 and a couple of years later, I bought a pair of decks and a load of house music records," says Bliss. "I had this inkling in my head: I know so much about the music and I love it so much, surely I can put two and two together and find out how you DJ?

"I got people to tell me what exactly it is when you put two records together and started playing parties at my college. Then about four months later, I got a couple of jobs in some London clubs and started making records about the same time. I've not looked back since."

Bliss first met Rollo through a mutual friend, who was also interested in making music.

"I'd bought a little computer and a keyboard, which I'd set up in my mum's bedroom, and was making loads of tunes," says Bliss. "Rollo liked the record that I'd made with our friend and said that he wanted to put it out. That was the very beginning of Cheeky before it turned into the behemoth record label you know today."

Faithless released their debut album Reverence in 1996 and achieved their first major breakthrough with the epic house track Insomnia, which inspired a plethora of inferior, Euro-house rip-offs by the irksome likes of Sash. Faithless have also trodden a similar musical path with God is a DJ, the first single from their second album Sunday 8pm, and most recently Outrospective's We Come 1.

"It's quite hard, because Faithless have been associated with that even though there's so much different music on a Faithless record," says Bliss.

"In the beginning, it was very hard because our music wasn't played on the radio and we really had just club support.

"We tended to select tracks for the first single of an album which were big club numbers because we knew that they would work in a club. In some ways, it would be nice not to have to do that but I'm really proud of the music we make.

"We're trying to break the conventions but every time we release something that's not a thumping full-on record, it's very difficult for us because it's not something that people associate with Faithless."

According to Bliss, Faithless' musical diversity is best summed up by Outrospective's cover art, which features an ambiguous illustration of a dancing youth. That comes from a book called Century and it was a picture of a riot in 19th-century Paris .

"What I love about it is that the guy looks like he's dancing and it kind of describes the word 'outrospective'. But actually he's throwing a Molotov cocktail at the forces of oppression. In some ways, that picture represents Faithless. We haven't done anything in a typical way. We advanced by not playing live, we were on a tiny independent label. We weren't just doing one thing to make it easy for the record-buying public."

Outrospective is also Faithless' first album without former vocalist Jamie Catto, who left the band to work on his own project, One Giant Leap, a travelogue-style film and album that features artists from all over the world, including New Zealand's Whiri Mako Black and George Nuku.

"Jamie directed a couple of Faithless videos and has now found his muse," says Bliss. "We like working with different people. Every album we've collaborated with people, from Dido to Boy George. Jamie was someone who was on our first two albums, as was Dido. We've now found a new singer called Zoe Johnson and we wanted to work with her, so it was time for Jamie to do his own thing.

"The main three people in the studio are me, Rollo and Maxi and when we play live, it's an eight-piece band. It keeps Faithless fresh if we keep working with different people. Maxi is the centrepiece, the focal point of Faithless and it's really nice to contrast him with other textures."

* Faithless with Epsilon Blue, St James, Wednesday, May 1.