Like their erstwhile labelmates Lemon Jelly, BASEMENT JAXX duo Daniel Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton are starsailing dancefloor maestros whose collective antenna is clearly open to receiving ideas and possibilities from the most unlikely sources. Their manipulation of all manner of samples and structures into songs of playful invention that send you arbitrarily running for the dancefloor is the stuff of legend, so to have most of their best moments collated under one handy umbrella with "The Singles" makes for a dynamite compendium.
And, as is often the case with these career retrospectives, you have a tendency to forget just how many cool singles Basement Jaxx have put out over the past, ooh, seven or eight years or so. The opening "Red Alert" soon puts you straight. It's all rubber-thumbed funk basslines and Blue James' effortlessly soulful vocals and makes out like the feistiest day-glo party ever.
From there on anything goes, and Ratcliffe and Buxton draw together a whole host of fascinating guests to realise their brilliantly ambitious sonic aspirations. Some of it's hard and heavy ( the wobbly, junglist manoeuvres and manic toasting of "Jump'n'Shout", the mental "Where's Your Head At?" which liberally samples Gary Numan's "This Wreckage"), while at other times, tha Jaxx take us on a cultural rollercoaster taking in infectious, Afro-Caribbean grooves ("Bingo Bango") or Middle-Eastern arabesques, like on "Lucky Star": one of the highlights from the recent "Kish Kash" album, complete with a hectoring vocal from Dizzee Rascal and a calming female foil in Mona at the cool blue chorus.
All of these are notable additions to the Jaxx canon, but it's with "Jus 1 Kiss", "Do Your Thing" and "Good Luck" that Ratcliffe and Buxton achieve the pinnacle of their achievements. "Jus 1 Kiss" finds Basement Jaxx acknowledging the importance of Chic's sophisticated dancefloor grooves, taking their track "You Can't Do It Alone" as the bedrock and building something equally sublime around it. "Do Your Thing", meanwhile, takes its' cue from Kenny Baron's "Fungi Mama" and is playful, jazzy and very clever indeed. Arguably best of all, though, is "Good Luck", where the boys rope in a commandingly sassy vocal from The Bellrays' Lisa Kekaula and ally it to a dramatic orchestral swirl from the London Session Orchestra. It flows seamlessly and is a truly great five minutes of anyone's time.
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Just to remind us (as if we didn't know) that Basement Jaxx are still very much a going concern, new single "Oh My Gosh" also makes the hitlist, and it's by no means dwarfed. This time the guest vocalist is Vula Maliga and she adds a suitably coquettish vocal to a prowling groove and a song about a girl on the pull ("you like the way I put my lipstick.....on") that's both coyly effective and cunningly realised.
OK, there's the odd ommission (where's the anarchic brilliance of the Siouxsie Sioux-assisted "Kish Kash" guys?), but really who's complaining? "The Singles" is one of those nigh-on seamless does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin affairs that you can't possibly lose with. It's high-octane fun all the way and guaranteed to get even hardened wallflowers to lose their inhibitions. Let's hope it's only the end of the first chapter in the Basement Jaxx saga as well.
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