Keep the Faith

Sister Bliss talks dance moves, politics and garden sheds…

Faithless have been, without a doubt, one of the most influential bands in dance music of the last decade. Whether it’s reducing clubbers to hapless euphoria with ‘God is a DJ’ or transfixing crowds with Maxi Jazz’s deeply moving and powerful lyrics on ‘Mass Destruction’, there is no denying their importance in today’s musical landscape. Fashions may come and go – from minimal to maximal, electroclash to deep house - but Faithless don’t give a monkeys, they concentrate in doing what they do best: creating sweeping emotional soundscapes topped by one of the most distinctive voices in electronic music. Their sound connects with a hundreds of thousands of music lovers – from bright eyed young teenagers getting their first taste of clubbing to ex- ravers who’ve hung up their glow sticks.

As well as her role in the band, Sister Bliss made a name for herself with her DJ sets and solo productions such as ‘Sister Sister’. Her own projects were put on the back burner during last year’s hectic Faithless touring schedule, but now she’s back behind the decks, with a brand new mix album ‘Night Moves’. Roz Wilson sat her down for a natter about life after a major label, new Faithless material in the pipeline, and misguided celebrity spotting…

Endclub.com: Your new mix album takes in quite a broad range of what can loosely be classified as house – from deeper sounds to peak time stormers. Is this a representation of what you’re playing at the moment?

Sister Bliss: Yes pretty much - the idea was not to make it so painfully trendy that it would be out of date in five minutes, so there are plenty of tunes on there that I am still playing out.

It features your remix of The Enemy’s ‘This Song’. What attracted you to remix this tune?

I just loved the track, thought the lyrics were fantastic and felt we could really take somewhere. It’s a little bit edgy, a little bit melancholy and it was also nice to do something that’s not typically dance and has more of an indie sound. The remix has a bit of Nalin & Kane to it, but also a bit of 2 Bad Mice, as it’s got a choppy ravey bit in the middle. When I first played it at The Gallery, you could really hear a ripple as the vocal comes out so clear and so loud - it was just like… wow.

The mix album is called ‘Nightmoves’ – have you got a signature dance move?

I have been told I look like I'm shagging the decks! I sort of rock backwards and forwards when I’m mixing… so yeah – shagging the decks would be my signature dance move!

What about Maxi - has he got a signature dance move?

Yeah definitely – bending his knees and shaking his booty! He’s got a bit of a reggae vibe to his dancing.

Do you find you have much time for going out clubbing when you’re not DJing?

Not as much, because I play every week, that’s quite enough going out for me at the moment! Having said that, I was out for my friend’s birthday the weekend and the Cuban Brothers were DJing - absolute chaos god bless ‘em, it was an excellent party. Six hours of dancing in heels – I had very taut calves afterwards!

You’re a long time resident of The Gallery – how was the last ever party at Turnmills?

It was just incredible, one of the most fantastic send-offs for a club. Tall Paul and I both played ‘history of house’ type sets – I spent about a month pulling together the best records of the last 20 years, including plenty of Gallery classics that made the place explode!

We hear there may be a new Faithless album in the pipeline….?

Well – we have written loads and loads of new music, so we’ll see where it ends up in the next few months.

What sort of direction are you going for at the moment?

Hmmm… loud?! Basically, we were away in LA for ten weeks and we wrote and wrote and wrote, and loads of music just came out, in all different shapes and forms! We definitely want to make sure we have a record that is burning up all dancefloors - I still believe we’ve got it in us if we put our minds to it! We haven’t done an out and out club record for a while. One of the greatest satisfactions for me is to make a track that sounds underground but still manages to top the charts. ‘We Come 1’ was probably the last really big record in that department. ‘Mass Destruction’ and ‘Bombs’ are both tracks track that I’m really proud of, but neither were made as club records in the same way. When we wrote the last album I was very pregnant and not going out that much, so I wanted to make something more mellow and introspective – but I’ve come out of that phase now and am ready to party! I want to make it the best record we could possibly make!

The band parted company with Sony BMG in 2007. How are you finding life after a major label?

Well, there’s no pressure to do anything, so it means that we’re taking a while to get things done, but at the same time I think we needed a bit of a break. Last year we toured incessantly, which was fantastic – but we only finished that in October, and now we’re pretty busy DJing and writing – music never stops! It’s nice now there’s no pressure to release things to a schedule, or to be competing against a bunch of other acts for attention.  I mean who knows – we may end up needing a label, but I want us to be the ones who choose when we release stuff, and I want the whole world to be behind it.

Any tales of debauchery from the tour last year you’d care to share? Any gigs that were particularly special?

I can’t really remember, it’s all a bit of a blur! Doing our first stadium, the Gelredome in Holland, was definitely one of the standout gigs of the tour. It was quite Pink Floyd-esque in a way as we revisited loads of our back catalogue, so it felt like a really long and spacious show – in a good way. There were 25,000 people there – I just kept looking out and thinking "god this is huge!"

Is it more nerve wracking playing to a crowd that big, or after a certain point does it not make any difference?

It is definitely nerve wracking as it’s your own show, plus you know that people have seen you in smaller venues before, so you feel like you have to go the extra mile in a stadium, and make sure all the production is spot on, to make sure it has the right impact. For me, the beauty of Faithless has always been that we are very powerful as a live band without being dressed up with knobs and whistles, but for the stadium we went all out. There were literally ten trucks out the back, and I just thought "oh my God, how did we get to this?" From having fun in the garden shed and putting out a little record that was mostly ignored, to twelve years later playing a football stadium!

Did you really start in off in a shed?

Yes! Our studio was in a shed in the back of this guy’s house – he was one of those hippies who’s not really a hippy, one of the worst kind, you know the sort!     

Faithless have always been a political band with strong messages in the music, and you’ve previously describes Maxi as a ‘modern day preacher’. Is music one of the most powerful ways of getting moral and political messages across to young people?

It’s very hard to get a message across in lyrics without sounding like you are lecturing people, but Maxi manages to do it as he approaches it from a very human perspective. It’s a bit more subtle than just slagging off governments – he is saying that we need to change our hearts and the way we treat each other before we can expect to have a great society. ‘Mass Destruction’ was pretty much an anti war song, but it was from the perspective a man going off to war leaving his son at home, and how it was going to destroy the family – as that’s what war does, it destroys the fabric of society. So although Maxi did namecheck Haliburton and Enron in the chorus, that’s probably the most political he’s ever got – he names them as examples of what happens when people become too greedy and self serving.

You didn’t get a nasty email from their press office, did you?

Well, that’s what was so surprising, we thought it might get banned in America , but it ended up getting quoted by American senators, and the track got loads of airplay out there.

One of things that has always struck me about Faithless is that the lives shows are always extraordinarily powerful – whenever I’ve been to a gig, even the old cynics end up with their hand in the air singing along to ‘We Come 1’. Do you think this is one of the secrets to your long lasting success?

I always quite like speaking to people who have preconceptions that we’re shit - that to me is almost the most exciting thing, converting the cynics! We put a lot of work into crafting that live show, so it’s got meaning, beauty, bass and density. One the one hand it has a punky anarchic feel to it, and it all just becomes a wall of noise, whereas at the same time there’s a real delicate edge to it too. That’s what I get really excited about – putting it all together and making it flow like I would with a DJ set.

Are there any countries where you find your fans are particularly fanatical or passionate?

To be honest – they are pretty incredible everywhere! Glastonbury, Manchester, Scotland, Belgium…we played in Latvia for the first time last year, and China - they don’t even have a history of dance music, but they were so passionate it was mind blowing! We played America for the first time in ages, headling a stage at Coachella – which again was awesome, I could really feel Maxis’ lyrics were invigorating the crowd and there was a real connection. I think the current political climate makes the lyrics especially relevant.

Do you get approached by fans in the street?

Well, the other day Maxi got stopped in the street and this guy said. “Are you who I think you are?” and he said “Well I might be.” And the guys starts going: “Look, Look, it’s David Chappelle!” Maxi just pissed himself laughing. So that’s the kind of appreciation we get! It’s good to get the popularity without the misery of fame.

So we won’t be seeing you in Heat Magazine’s ‘Circle of Shame’ any time soon?

Well I’ve been extremely shameful in the past – we all have - but luckily for us no one gives a shit! The press have always been either really supportive or really damming, but it’s always about the music not what we do personally, as that’s not the game we play – we’re not falling out of Chinawhite with our knickers round our ears!

Published: 4/08/2008