Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash

So, this entry is pretty lo-cal. But I guess that’s appropriate for the music. Maybe not Shakespeare but holy shit is this a fun album. It is funky and insane and frenetic and substantive. Which is not unheard of in non-American dance music, but still quite refreshing in our Will I Am Era. Everything about the music is lush and well constructed. The Beats? Are, I think it is fair to say, Phat. The melodies are well constructed and rewarding. Excellent bass lines. The lyrics are really good ini that kind of calorie free yet not a love song kind of way that dance music lyrics are. The  vocals are really well done by a variety of talented artists, including the amazing Lisa Kekaula from The Bellrays who is awesome, and Siouxie Sioux, who is pretty much in everything. Seriously. She is the musical equivalent of Samuel Jackson. I think she was on the Star Wars Episode 1 Soundtrack. That’s not true but you can tell people you heard it somewhere.

So yeah there’s not many tracks on here I am even luke-warm on. The energy goes pretty well from the beginning through track 10, Cish Cash. Which is maybe the title track, but maybe not? But then I don’t know what cish cash, or kish kash, or whatever, even means. Actually the internet is a bit thin on info about Basement Jaxx as a whole. I really only know about them from a reference in a Blur song. Which seems weird, they are a pretty successful act. I mean “Where’s Your Head At?” was huge, even if it is apparently most famous for being in Tomb Raider. Really? Tomb Raider? A lot cooler is the fact that “Good Luck” was the title track for the Appleseed movie. That movie wasn’t great, but it sure was pretty.

So this album rules and you should buy it if you want some high energy dance music. The one thing that annoys me about this genre is that, because the songs “Feat: Soand So” the songs never come up in the right order in playlists or mp3 players. This bugs me. And it seems really genre specific. I mean, I know other bands that have guest vocalists, but they rarely bother with the Feat thing unless they are in dance or hip hop. That’s lame. And stupid.