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ARTICLE
The most successful musical acts are often those that defy categorisation. They refuse to be pigeonholed or typecast, often fusing different genres and unifying seemingly disparate fan bases. The other thing those acts have in common is that they’re greater than the sum of their parts…
Maxi Jazz, Sister Bliss, Rollo Armstrong and Jamie Cato formed Faithless in 1995, after a friend introduced Sister Bliss to “an amazing rapper from Brixton who’s a Buddhist”. Immediately, the group’s chemistry and idiosyncrasy were obvious, and before long their reputation as a thrilling live act was more than justified.
Drawing inspiration from ground-breaking electronic artists including Leftfield, Underworld and Massive Attack, their sound tended to shift between dark, downtempo trip-hop and euphoric hands-in-the-air trance. The combination proved commercially successful whilst staying true to the group’s beloved rave scene, making room for both Sister Bliss’s stadium-sized synth riffs and Maxi’s ruminative lyricism.
The collective released their debut ‘Reverence’ one year later in 1996, an album that included the career-defining ‘Insomnia’ and its immortal line “I can’t get no sleep”. As Mixmag put it so well, “It’s testament to Maxi’s songwriting that what might be the raunchiest lyric in dance music, “tearing off tights with my teeth”, is only the second most impressionistic line from ‘Insomnia’.”
By the end of the decade, dance music was a huge part of mainstream culture. And along with the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, Faithless were amongst the first acts to bring club music to an often rock-orientated festival scene, as Sister Bliss explained on Becky Hill’s podcast, The Art of Rave in 2020:
“We did a massive heavy metal festival in Finland in the early days and as we walked on they said ‘Faithless suck!’ and the band before had, like, bitten the head off a pigeon Ozzy Osbourne style and the lead singer was covered in blood and we were like, why have we been booked to play this festival?” she said. “But we just kind of turned up the punk energy, which is what you can do in a live performance [...] Our sound engineer cranked up the drums and the guitars and Maxi put on his biggest anarcho-Buddhist punk vibes, and we won the respect of that crowd.”
The Prodigy, meanwhile, headlined Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 1997, paving the way for headline sets from the Chemical Brothers and Moby in the following years. Faithless never quite took Glasto’s headline slot, playing second fiddle to Coldplay in 2002, but they’d risen to bill-topper status at all but the largest festivals by the early 2000s, bringing their distinctive sound to an increasingly receptive audience of fans from all genres.
Of course, what set Faithless apart from their contemporaries was the spiritual bent that Maxi Jazz and his Buddhist faith brought to the project. Sure, the Chemical Brothers or Fatboy Slim could give people a good time and send a crowd into a frenzy. But Faithless could do all that whilst simultaneously asking the audience to question their spirituality or their politics. If the Prodigy’s Keith Flint was dance music’s angry, pyromaniacal teen, then Maxi Jazz (aged 40 when Faithless formed) was its wise elder statesman, encouraging pacifism and contemplation amongst the chaos.
Whilst the band were never exactly critical darlings, the numbers speak for themselves: over 15 million albums sold worldwide, five UK Top 10 albums, and 10 UK Top 20 singles, not to mention their chart-topping, four-times-platinum greatest hits collection, ‘Forever Faithless’. And if you wanted proof from their peers, the remix album ‘Faithless 2.0’ features the likes of Avicii, Armin Van Buuren, Tiësto, Eric Prydz and Claptone, while other collaborators include artists as varied as Cat Power, LSK, and Robert Smith of The Cure.
Perhaps even more...
To read the full article, you’ll need to have a physical copy of the magazine which you can sign up for here for 6 issues delivered to your door from just £16!
https://store.promobile.online/products/pro-mobile-magazine-6-issue-1-year-subscription
You’ll also get full interactive access to this and the last year of magazines via the Pro Mobile Magazine App which is available from both the Apple App Store and Android PlayStore
Maxi Jazz, Sister Bliss, Rollo Armstrong and Jamie Cato formed Faithless in 1995, after a friend introduced Sister Bliss to “an amazing rapper from Brixton who’s a Buddhist”. Immediately, the group’s chemistry and idiosyncrasy were obvious, and before long their reputation as a thrilling live act was more than justified.
Drawing inspiration from ground-breaking electronic artists including Leftfield, Underworld and Massive Attack, their sound tended to shift between dark, downtempo trip-hop and euphoric hands-in-the-air trance. The combination proved commercially successful whilst staying true to the group’s beloved rave scene, making room for both Sister Bliss’s stadium-sized synth riffs and Maxi’s ruminative lyricism.
The collective released their debut ‘Reverence’ one year later in 1996, an album that included the career-defining ‘Insomnia’ and its immortal line “I can’t get no sleep”. As Mixmag put it so well, “It’s testament to Maxi’s songwriting that what might be the raunchiest lyric in dance music, “tearing off tights with my teeth”, is only the second most impressionistic line from ‘Insomnia’.”
By the end of the decade, dance music was a huge part of mainstream culture. And along with the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, Faithless were amongst the first acts to bring club music to an often rock-orientated festival scene, as Sister Bliss explained on Becky Hill’s podcast, The Art of Rave in 2020:
“We did a massive heavy metal festival in Finland in the early days and as we walked on they said ‘Faithless suck!’ and the band before had, like, bitten the head off a pigeon Ozzy Osbourne style and the lead singer was covered in blood and we were like, why have we been booked to play this festival?” she said. “But we just kind of turned up the punk energy, which is what you can do in a live performance [...] Our sound engineer cranked up the drums and the guitars and Maxi put on his biggest anarcho-Buddhist punk vibes, and we won the respect of that crowd.”
The Prodigy, meanwhile, headlined Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 1997, paving the way for headline sets from the Chemical Brothers and Moby in the following years. Faithless never quite took Glasto’s headline slot, playing second fiddle to Coldplay in 2002, but they’d risen to bill-topper status at all but the largest festivals by the early 2000s, bringing their distinctive sound to an increasingly receptive audience of fans from all genres.
Of course, what set Faithless apart from their contemporaries was the spiritual bent that Maxi Jazz and his Buddhist faith brought to the project. Sure, the Chemical Brothers or Fatboy Slim could give people a good time and send a crowd into a frenzy. But Faithless could do all that whilst simultaneously asking the audience to question their spirituality or their politics. If the Prodigy’s Keith Flint was dance music’s angry, pyromaniacal teen, then Maxi Jazz (aged 40 when Faithless formed) was its wise elder statesman, encouraging pacifism and contemplation amongst the chaos.
Whilst the band were never exactly critical darlings, the numbers speak for themselves: over 15 million albums sold worldwide, five UK Top 10 albums, and 10 UK Top 20 singles, not to mention their chart-topping, four-times-platinum greatest hits collection, ‘Forever Faithless’. And if you wanted proof from their peers, the remix album ‘Faithless 2.0’ features the likes of Avicii, Armin Van Buuren, Tiësto, Eric Prydz and Claptone, while other collaborators include artists as varied as Cat Power, LSK, and Robert Smith of The Cure.
Perhaps even more...
To read the full article, you’ll need to have a physical copy of the magazine which you can sign up for here for 6 issues delivered to your door from just £16!
https://store.promobile.online/products/pro-mobile-magazine-6-issue-1-year-subscription
You’ll also get full interactive access to this and the last year of magazines via the Pro Mobile Magazine App which is available from both the Apple App Store and Android PlayStore
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 118, Pages 26-31.
