It's almost funny that an act like Basement Jaxx-- shameless populists, almost panderingly so at times-- can be so divisive. It's dance music overloaded with bubblegum divas and post-rave special effects created in an era when "minimal" has become a goddamned genre. (Lady Gaga can sell bubblegum diva and post-rave special effects as pop but she has personality-driven media appeal and brutally obvious songwriting.) But while they've continued to give subtlety the finger, the Jaxx have tightened up in recent years, doubling down on their hooks while clearing away the sonic clutter. For instance: 2009's streamlined Scars was originally meant to be a double album; Zephyr-- 33 minutes of synth washes, ethnographic pastiches, and soft-rock jams-- is the heretofore assumed scrapped second disc.
Zephyr may seem slight, but, in theory if not practice, it affirms that Basement Jaxx refuse to limit themselves, and that's their main gift to 21st century dance music. Which is kinda perverse when you consider Zephyr could be sold as the Jaxx's "downtempo" album, a genre that all but prides itself on ruthlessly enforcing its well-known limits. On my first listen to Zephyr, I thought: This is the most antic "ambient" album of all time. On the second I was reminded of one of those Sublime Frequencies comps where a jackleg ethnographer recorded a few days' worth of indigenous radio, collaging the results together. Call it Radio South London 2009, maybe: The Jaxx have taken the borderless wash of sound around them-- on the airwaves and in the market stalls-- and given it a new coat of Jaxx-ian glitz. Whether it's moody balearic guitar ("Peace of Mind") or ersatz Middle Eastern soundtrack music ("Alkazaar"), the Jaxx have infused sounds both currently hip and perennially winning with their usual wit and flash.
But since when would Basement Jaxx be content with seamlessly recreating, well, anything? If the Jaxx are anything, they're inveterate mixers, DJs to the core. The best bits of Zephyr gently slip between genres in a manner that recalls a hyper-pop version of the KLF's somnambulent Chill Out, a travelogue that plays with time (the history of post-rave dance) rather than distance (the dreamed wide open spaces of the U.S.A.). Occasionally the Jaxx seem to be having a playful laugh at both downtempo's conventions, and their own. "Check the Fuse" makes a minute of hoary cocktail piano cheese come to Technicolor life through loony digital processing, while final track "Ascension" tries to squeeze in all of the Jaxx's late-90s obsessions (Latin jazz, ragga dancehall, the girliest bits of girly house).
Zephyr is certainly chock full of Jaxx trademarks, but releasing it as a stand-alone maxi-EP, an experimental curio, means no one will mistake it for the sixth Basement Jaxx album. In a weird way I wish it was, though, because it'd earn the appropriate amount of attention due the last curveball the Jaxx had to throw at fans: a subtle, damn-near-chilled-out record after a decade-plus of OTT-as-aesthetic strategy. It'll be even funnier if it manages to divide fans as well as foes.
