For the last 12 years, Faithless have blended house and hip hop to create their own genre of dance music topped with astute social commentary. They’ve been responsible for some of the most definitive moments in dance music, including singles like Insomnia (1995), God is a DJ (1998) and Mass Destruction (2005). Touring in support of their new album To All New Arrivals, Faithless play T-Mobile Arena in Prague on 10 April.

Each of the three members of Faithless is a fascinating individual in their own right. There’s Sister Bliss, the classically-trained pianist, accomplished multi-instrumentalist, dance music composer and house DJ. There’s Rollo, producer extraordinaire and A-list remixer, who can’t play any instruments and never tours with the band. And then there’s Maxi Jazz, the world’s only motor-racing Buddhist rapper, and without a doubt one of the coolest men in music.

Maxi Jazz has so much to say, we’ve decided to give him two features instead of one.

In part one, we ask him about Faithless: the platinum-selling albums, the epic tours, the lyrics, the children and the racing cars. In part two, we ask him about faith: his beliefs as a Nichiren Buddhist, and how these inform his lyrics.

Finishing the new album To All New Arrivals was a race against time; everything had to be wrapped up before Sister Bliss gave birth. Rollo also had a child on the way. It’s no surprise that children feature heavily in the album’s lyrics.

‘Children were very much on the minds of both Rollo and Sister Bliss, and I was happy to write lyrics in that vein,’ says Maxi Jazz. His lyrics, touching on such themes as war, terrorism, poverty and migration, cast Faithless as proud parents aghast at the world they are bringing their children into. The first single from the album was last November’s Bombs, an anthemic critique of ‘noise, panic and confusion / But to some, another fun day in Babylon’. For Maxi, the theme of childhood is a powerful vehicle for getting a message across. He says, ‘I think that when you talk about a difficult and dangerous situation from the point of view of “look, this has to change”, if you involve children, people seem to be more inclined to get something done about it. It’s a shame, but that’s how it is. It’s much easier to see a problem with other adults as being just their problem: “They don’t live here, we don’t eat the same food, I don’t care.” But kids are kids the world over, so if you talk about a situation that’s difficult for a child, then it’s more urgent.’

Maxi’s raps on To All New Arrivals are backed by appearances from a number of guest vocalists, including Cat Power, and Robert Smith of The Cure. And as has been the tradition ever since their first album Reverence (1996), Rollo’s sister joins them for one track, Last This Day. Nowadays, though, Rollo’s sister is better known as the international superstar Dido. Has their relationship changed at all?

‘Yeah,’ laughs Maxi, ‘I don’t see her! That’s the only real difference. I mean, she’s busy as hell, she spends a lot of time in America. But no, aside from that, she’s still exactly the same Dido that I knew. She’s almost completely unaffected by it, aside from the fact that she’s so well-off.’

One clear change in the Faithless camp is that nowadays they’ve chosen to do shorter tours. Back in the 90s, Faithless had a reputation as the hardest-working band in showbusiness, touring non-stop for up to three and a half years at a time. Maxi recalls, ‘Right at the beginning we were like, “Bloody hell! Everyone wants to see us play, so let’s go!” Plus you’re thinking, “This isn’t going to last more than a year or two - deal with it while it’s here.” And so we went on tour for well over three years. We came back and made another album, the third album, and thought, “Nobody’s going to buy this album in the same quantities as the last two.” We put the album out, and bam, off it went again, so off we went again for another two years. It’s been quite astonishing, the amount of affection this band has received.’

Faithless’s third member, Rollo, never tours with the band. Mainly, this is because his expertise is studio wizardry, but as we discover from Maxi, there’s a little more to it:

‘Actually, Rollo’s not allowed on tour!’ he laughs. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but there was a little while a few years back when he was dissuaded from making too much of an appearance. Simply because, as balanced and thoughtful as he is, he is completely tactless. He just says it as he sees it, without a second’s hesitation - which is fine, you want that, but not necessarily as you come offstage from a gig. You’re sweating, you’re emotional, and in comes Rollo and says “Raaaaaaaaah!”  And the whole room looks at him, and he goes, “What? What did I say?”

‘But Rollo really is a factor with the live band.  While we’re rehearsing before we go out to do a show, we’ll rehearse the band for two or three weeks, and then we’ll call Uncle Rollo in for the last couple of days. And Rollo’s got punter’s ears, know what I mean? He’s not been listening to the band for the last two or three weeks, every song over and over again, like we have. So he’ll come in and listen to it, and he’ll kind of arrange it for us.’

In his spare time, Maxi Jazz is a professional racing car driver. Last year, he competed in the Porsche Carrera Cup, an experience he describes as ‘easily the scariest, most involving thing I’ve ever done’. His own ‘new arrival’, a Porsche 997 GT3, appears on the inlay of the new album. Of his second career, he says,‘I think the real thrill of motor racing for me is not so much the going past people, or even the going fast. It’s that, in order to be fast, you have to drive through your fear barrier. The cars will go round the corner so quickly that it is literally unbelievably quick. You cannot quite bring yourself to believe that the car will go round the corner if you take your foot off the brake - now! All racing drivers know that the car will do it. They trust that the car will; they’re confident that the car will. So they take their foot off the brake - now!  It is so scary when you’re coming up to a corner at well over 150 miles per hour, and you have to brake down to about 100 to get round this corner. I leave my foot on the brake just that little extra bit longer. And that’s the thing – if you want to be as quick as them, you have to lift off the brake.’

Later this year Maxi will have two more new arrivals: his parents, who he’s moving over from Jamaica during the hurricane season. The weather phenomenon known as El Niño is widely expected to wreak havoc in the Caribbean in 2007, and Maxi is taking no chances:

‘Three years ago, Hurricane Ivan was headed straight for my mum’s house. At the last minute it turned east, and just went along the coast of the country from about 200 miles away. They just got the peripheral winds, which were quite enough to cause extensive damage. And we’ve got El Niño this year, so I’m like, “Sod that, you’re coming to England for the hurricane season, and I’m going to send you home when it’s finished.” So between August and October, I’m gonna have them at home.’

FAITHLESS
T-Mobile Arena, Prague
10 April Tue 2000