12/29/2023 0 Comments Faithless insomnia maxi![]() Touring for more than a year afterwards, Faithless returned to make their second album, Sunday 8PM (1998), which contained God Is a DJ, a celebration of the semi-religious healing power of the dance floor. Insomnia reached No 3 on the singles chart and shot to popularity almost everywhere in mainland Europe, topping the charts in Finland, Norway and Switzerland. Both received relentless play on the Ibiza rave scene and subsequently sold more than 1m copies each in the UK, instantly putting the band in the vanguard of an electronic dance music craze. The first Faithless album, Reverence, released in 1996, included the singles Salva Mea (with guest vocals from Dido, sister of Rollo) as well as Insomnia. “But then it would stop coming from your head and begin to appear from your heart, and that’s when it got good.” “I usually started writing at night, and most of the words that came out to begin with would be rubbish – stuff you wouldn’t even show your mum,” he said. With Bliss providing the melodies and Rollo the remixes and production, Jazz came up with lyrics that often hit poetic heights. But their success was limited and they disbanded in the mid-90s, paving the way for Jazz, by then in his late 30s, to form Faithless with fellow Londoners Sister Bliss (Ayalah Bentovim), Rollo (Rowland Armstrong) and Jamie Catto (who remained with the group until 1999) – all around 10 years his junior. With Jazz now upfront, Soul Food Cafe released three EPs on his own Namu Records label, touring with big acts such as Jamiroquai and Soul II Soul. So it was like: ‘If I don’t start writing some lyrics here, I’m never going to get anywhere’, and that’s why I started writing words.”įaithless in 1998: Maxi Jazz, centre, Sister Bliss, right, and Dave Randall, guitarist with the group between 19. “ three months later you haven’t seen this kid, and either his girlfriend’s pregnant or he’s gonna have to go to court, or some bollocks is going on, and he hasn’t written the lyrics. “I’d give them a cassette of beats and I’d say ‘Go and write some words … ,” he remembered. In 1984 he set up Soul Food Cafe, a Brixton-based hip-hop collective, extracting sounds from his vast vinyl collection over which promising young London rappers would be commissioned to provide vocals. ![]() He took on his stage name as a DJ in London clubs in his 20s, also working on pirate radio stations such as LWR and supplementing his income with a variety of jobs, including for BT and as a council parks gardener. He was born Maxwell Fraser in Hackney, north London, but was brought up by his Jamaican parents, Harold and Ivet, in south London, attending Selhurst high school and living for most of his life in the Thornton Heath, Brixton and West Norwood areas. In contrast to some vocal offerings associated with dance culture, Jazz’s words frequently exhibited a social consciousness that stimulated the mind as well as the body. As fellow Faithless founder Sister Bliss acknowledged, he also “gave proper meaning and a message” to the trance-like music she laid down in their core years between 19.
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