Basement Jaxx - Junto

Basement Jaxx

Junto

25 August 2014

Atlantic Jaxx/PIAS

 

2.5 stars out of 5

 

 

Seven albums into their career, Basement Jaxx seem to have decided that they have earned the right to waste twenty-five minutes of their fans’ time before getting to the good stuff. The first half of Junto is incredibly boring. It’s dentist’s office boring. It’s waiting in line at the bank boring. But then the second side kicks in, and the dull, redundant house of the first side disappears, and Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton grab your hand and take you on an adventure of genre hopping, stamping your passport in many different dance music nations before dropping you off at your door. Or at least they try to, but they don’t seem to have either the desire or the stamina to make it happen.

 

While the second side is still not enough to make up for the agony of the first side, at least it’s an attempt. The Jaxx seem on autopilot for such derivative ditties as “Unicorn” and “Never Say Never.” Any hope you might have had for good times is crushed beneath the heavy hammer of horrible house early on, so that by the time you get to “Rock This Road” or “Sneakin’ Toronto” (a couple of later tracks that are actally borderline good) you’ve lost the will to go on. Call the coroner, because this record has taken its own life.

 

If you check out only one track on Junto, let it be the drum’n’bass hip hop of “Buffalo.” Not because this is the best track, but because it illustrates the album’s problems most adeptly. The track has the potential to be a tour de force of mayhem, but instead Ratcliffe and Buxton sleepwalk through it, wasting plenty of opportunities to bust loose and bring the crazy back to the dance floor. The potential is there, but the results are disappointing at best.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger