Basement Jaxx, Forum, Kentish Town, London
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Your support makes all the difference.If few dance-music acts are as likely to survive a decline in clubbing as surely as Basement Jaxx, it's largely down to how tirelessly adaptable they are. Since their debut album in 1999, Remedy, the London duo have devoted themselves to transforming dance music into an all-embracing, multicultural mélange, where innovation and pleasure-seeking go hand in hand. A Jaxx-style night out is no mere old-school house hooplah, but a place where carnival chaos, Prince-ly funk, loved-up Balearic, garage and whatever else takes Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton's fancy can get down as one.
In keeping with their clubbing-for-all policy, the duo have taken the tour for their third album, Kish Kash, around four points of London's compass, playing shows in Hackney, Brixton, Hammersmith and Kentish Town. It's clear from the off that they have nailed the art of translating club music for the live arena. If hearing Kish Kash is the aural equivalent of stumbling on an after-hours hoe-down just as it's peaking, the same goes for the concert. Anyone who has seen them will be familiar with their parade of dancers and guest vocalists, but this time around, they've married that to rock flourishes that bring the house down.
When the mighty-lunged front woman for The BellRays, Lisa Kekaula, kicks things off with Kish Kash's punk-house opener, "Good Luck", it says it all: why shouldn't garage-rock rub up with Basement Jaxx's more Ibiza-flavoured offerings? Hence tonight's super-powered run through "Where's Your Head at?", whose brilliantly dumb chorus and Gary Numan riff have never sounded so show-stopping. They also weave a raved-up version of The White Stripes' "7 Nation Army" into the set, as if to say that anything the new breed of rockers can do, the Jaxx can slap a few samples and breakbeats on, turn up to 11 and run rampant with.
In this club-rock utopia, hook-led pop anthems - designed to be played live - receive dance, funk and garage makeovers in a cheeky, chafing riot of flavours. On a teasingly slowed-down "Romeo", they give great garage-techno kitsch; on an energised "Lucky Star", a bhangra-disco pop ball; and on the propulsive oldie "Red Alert", as ever, a chance for the crowd to scream: "And the music keeps on playing, on and on," until their throats give out.
As far as Basement Jaxx go, truer words have never been yelped en masse. Sure, rumours of dance music's slow demise have been greatly exaggerated - but even if they hadn't been, on the evidence of tonight's boundary-stretching, floor-pounding eclecticism, the Jaxx show would run on regardless anyway.
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