Basement Jaxx new album Crazy Itch Radio is out in most of the world today with a US release due next week. Looking around the net it seems that the general consensus is that shine has worn a bit thin for the duo over the years. It certainly doesn't help that they were dropped from Astralwerks after the Grammy winning "Kish Kash", my favorite Jaxx album, failed to meet sales expectations or that they've used the stale radio-as-basis-of-a-concept-album thing for their new release. It was a bad idea when Junkie XL explored that same conceit three years ago, but given their level of skillalude I'm willing to give Crazy Itch a chance.
Having read a number of interviews with the band I was surprised when I stumbled into an interesting profile in The Times which gets to the essence of what they are about. More than simply electronic artists Felix Buxton is annoyed "the way people think we’re dance producers with bleepy boxes, when what we do is write songs in different styles" and we learn from Simon Ratcliffe that the chose radio as a the foundation for their album "because there isn’t one track that can fully represent us." I think that's a fair way of viewing the duo and it puts them further into the pop camp as the piece suggests although they weren't too pleased with their recent tour experience opening up for Robbie Williams as they "learnt that we don’t want to support anyone ever again.”
Download Crazy Itch Radio's first single "Hush Boy".
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