Trusting to faith

Faithless could well be the house band piping at the gates of Heaven

Faithless could well be the house band piping at the gates of Heaven. After all, they did claim last year that God Is A DJ and if that's true then Faithless could well be the band He or She always has on the Technics. It would make perfect sense because, with two dynamic albums already out there to convert the masses, there is no doubt this particular congregation is growing.

It's easy to see why. Faithless ooze class and charisma, a band who understand that dance music's many sides can be successfully harnessed into one powerful unit. After all, Faithless are Faithless because of what's in the mix: the dark, claustrophobic rap psalms of Maxi Jazz; the dancefloor appeal that is producer Rollo's speciality; the irresistible, uplifting, catchy melodies of Sister Bliss; the ceaseless enthusiasm of keyboardist Jamie Catto and the riffs new guitarist Dave Randall brings to the party.

As Catto explains: "We've all got shared values and yet we've all got very different ways of expressing what we believe, so we all sit around and we can argue until dawn comes up about anything. All the music really comes from these conversations or ideas.

"(Tracks) don't really start from a beat or a melody, they usually start from a concept or an idea, something that we want to express, and then the music furnishes that idea."

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Such a recipe has ensured tracks such as Insomnia (and especially the terrific monochrome video which accompanied it), Salva Mea and God Is A DJ have taken the band to international star status. Oddly enough, they remain a far greater commercial proposition outside their native Britain - although their second album, Sunday, 8pm, has changed this position somewhat.

For the band, Sunday, 8pm represents a massive step forward. Sister Bliss considers it to be "a masterpiece, especially Bring My Family Back, that's really freaky", while Catto goes a few steps beyond that: "There's so little lo-fi, low tempo music that's actually got melody on it that isn't poppy rubbish and this just walks the line between been melodious enough for you to want to keep putting it on but cool enough for it to not just be one big poppy load of old crap." It's obvious the incessant touring and bonding has also played a part in the creation of this new formula. "With the first album," Catto says, "we'd only just met each other and it was all just exciting and you could tell. But now, we know each other really well and we've had a lot more deeper, darker experiences. When something like Faithless comes into your life, a lot of other things in our lives have got displaced. There's all kinds of relationship nonsense and there's a lot of melancholy about being away from home and then going towards home and then going away from home."

And when you have a devout Buddhist such as Maxi Jazz onboard, the lyrics do tend towards the spiritual. "Maxi is a chanting-Buddhist kind of geezer and that's really affected his life in a very practical way. We're all spiritual but only in the same practical sense. It's all about practicality. If it's not helping your everyday life then I haven't got a lot of interest in it. It's about it working in a down-to-earth way, that's the essence of it and that's what's important about it," Catto says.

Hence the positive groove of God Is A DJ perhaps? "Absolutely," he agrees. "That song is saying that God is whatever inspires you, whatever moves you - and it can be found anywhere if anyone tries to look. Often in a club, you'll get a lot of people from different places and different backgrounds all sharing one value together, rocking out. That to my mind is a holy thing."

Sceptics and believers alike should gather at the Olympia on May 3rd.

Faithless play the Olympia on Monday, May 3rd