Basement Jaxx — Scars

One really great thing about Basement Jaxx is they truly do live on their own planet. They sonically push themselves to sound bigger and better than before on every record, without any real regard for popular music trends.

Their ability to pump out records with extremely of-the-moment musical guests that seem to keep them afloat in the British charts and music blogs is what does keep them trendy. Without people like Santigold, Kelis and Sam Sparro, would anyone care about Scars? Truthfully, who cares?

Jaxx albums are such amazingly jumbled dance-messes, it doesn't really matter who the hell is guesting on the track. Yoko Ono's dizzying audio-acid-trip "Day Of The Sunflowers (We March On)" and the nu-scat synth shakedown of "She's No Good," which features relative nobody Eli "Paperboy" Reed both pack a powerful sonic punch. The beautiful and bumpy dub of Santigold and nasty grind of Yo! Majesty's "Twerk" futher prove the Jaxx are lucky to be able to whip so many genres, noises, layers and non-traditional pop forms into one effort and get away with it. Anyone else would just be written off as sloppy.

This is the art of Basement Jaxx and Scars is one of the brightest splashes of colour on the canvas yet.

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