''Basement Jaxx vs. Metropole Orkest'' is a collaborative album by English

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

duo

Basement Jaxx Basement Jaxx are an English electronic music duo consisting of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe. The pair got their name from the regular club night they held in Brixton, London, UK. They first rose to popularity in the underground house scene ...

and Dutch orchestra

Metropole Orkest The Metropole Orkest (Metropole Orchestra) is a jazz and pop orchestra based in the Netherlands, and is the largest full-time ensemble of its kind in the world. A hybrid orchestra, it is a combination of jazz, big band and symphony orchestra. Com ...

. The album features of older Basement Jaxx tracks rearranged for an orchestra with participated vocals from

Vula Malinga Vula Malinga (born May 15, 1980) is an American-born British singer. Born in the United States to South African parents, she was raised in Hackney, London. Her religious parents supported her singing talents by allowing her to join the church c ...

, Sharlene Hector, Brendan Reilly, Oli Savill and

Lisa Kekaula Lisa Kekaula (born July 31, 1967) is the lead singer of American "rock 'n' soul" band The Bellrays. Early years Kekaula was born to an African-American mother, Linda and Native Hawaiian father, Alan Kekaula in Los Angeles, California, although t ...

. The album is a combination of recordings from that concert along with studio recordings.

Production

The tracks have been reworked by Felix Buxton and conductor

Jules Buckley Jules Buckley (born 8 January 1980) is an English conductor, composer, and arranger. Personal Buckley was born and grew up in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in the UK. He is the son of Keith Buckley (a doctor) and Joan Buckley, and attended Ayle ...

, with the entire album taking 18 months to complete. Buckley loosely formed the idea of re-interpreting the duo's back catalogue for live performance, but where concert programmes subsequently developed, so too did studio recordings. Buxton recalls:

"Jules’ proposal sounded cool and we were like, ‘why not?’. But it was a pretty open-ended request so there was ample opportunity to thrash out the creative details and make sure the world of Basement Jaxx fit well in this new context. We were adamant about it not being a gimmick; I’ve seen plenty of pop bands marry their dance beats or breaks with classical on a superficial level and the results have sounded a bit damp, a bit softcore. Our project needed to be genuine, to stand up..."

The duo had previously experienced working with an orchestra by collaborating with the 16-piece

London Session Orchestra The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony ...

for the song "

Good Luck Luck is the phenomenon and belief that defines the experience of improbable events, especially improbably positive or negative ones. The naturalistic interpretation is that positive and negative events may happen at any time, both due to rand ...

" in 2003, which was a way of reimagining Basement Jaxx’s music "in a completely different way," Buxton said. The album's recording took place at Muziekgebouw Frits Philips in

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022, They were joined by

which includes a 60-piece orchestra and a 20-voice choir, with four lead vocalists: Vula Malinga, Sharlene Hector, Brendan Reilly and Lisa Kekaula. "I could see the excited glint in Felix's eye when we first started scoring but there remained a real sense of 'where are we taking all this?' and 'how will this end up'?," Buckley said. They recorded a number of versions of certain tracks. Buckley said the unpredictability of the process was "a great big test bed of a thing" that made the final results more "powerful" and "authentic".

Material

The album is a combination of recordings from the concert along with studio recordings. Five of their six studio albums received the orchestral treatment, except for their 2009 album ''

Zephyr In European tradition, a zephyr is a light wind or a west wind, named after Zephyrus, the Greek god or personification of the west wind. Zephyr may also refer to: Arts and media Fiction Fiction media * ''Zephyr'' (film), a 2010 Turkish ...

''. The first track, "Battlement Jaxx", is new rendition from the Metropole Orkest of the ''

Crazy Itch Radio ''Crazy Itch Radio'' is the fourth studio album by English electronic music duo Basement Jaxx. The album features Linda Lewis and Swedish popstar Robyn among the guest vocalists. The album was listed on several publications' year-end lists, ...

'' intro, which was a classical piece composed by British arranger

Wil Malone Wil Malone (born 1952, in Hornsey, North London) is a British music producer and arranger, who has worked with artists including Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Todd Rundgren, The Verve, Massive Attack, Depeche Mode and Italian rocker Gianna Nannini ...

. Noticeably, "

Where's Your Head At "Where's Your Head At" is a song by British electronic music duo Basement Jaxx. It was released as the third single from their second album, ''Rooty'', on 19 November 2001. The song is based on samples from Gary Numan's songs " M.E." and " Thi ...

", a song from their 2001 album ''

Rooty ''Rooty'' is the second studio album by English electronic music duo Basement Jaxx, released on 25 June 2001 by the record labels XL and Astralwerks in the UK and US respectively. Like its predecessor '' Remedy'', ''Rooty'' was well-received c ...

'', originally was a

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...

dance-rock Dance-rock is a dance-infused genre of rock music. It is a post-disco genre connected with pop rock and post-punk with fewer rhythm and blues influences. It originated in the early 1980s, following the decline in popularity of both punk and disco ...

track. The song's "epic shock-pomp" was compared to

Carl Orff Carl Orff (; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982) was a German composer and music educator, best known for his cantata ''Carmina Burana'' (1937). The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education. Life Early life Car ...

’s "

Carmina Burana ''Carmina Burana'' (, Latin for "Songs from Benediktbeuern" 'Buria'' in Latin is a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces are mostly bawdy, irreverent ...

". "Mozart's Tea Party" was Buxton's first

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

creation, which he shared was a highlight from the concert.

Critical reception

Upon release, ''Basement Jaxx vs. Metropole Orkest'' received mostly positive reviews from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a

weighted mean The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 70, based on 6 reviews. Alex Macpherson from ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' awarded the album 3 out of 5 stars. Reviewing the album for ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', Andy Gill said many of the reinterpretations of the band's material transform so comprehensively they are barely recognizable. "Switching smoothly between contemporary classical orchestrations, big-band jazz and operatic chorale, the results are frequently breathtaking in their audacity." The album received mixed reaction from ''

DIY "Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and sem ...

Promotion

A day before their performance at the Muziekgebouw Frits Philips, on 3 February 2011, Metropole Orkest with Malinga, Hector and Reilly gave a small live ensemble version of "Do Your Thing" on the Dutch talk show ''

De Wereld Draait Door ''De Wereld Draait Door'' (; English: "The world keeps on turning") also known by the acronym DWDD was an early-evening talk show on Dutch television, broadcast every weekday at 7:00 p.m. on NPO 1. It is the Netherlands' longest-running, reg ...

''. Due to the big success of the Netherlands' show, the production team decided to conduct two shows at The Barbican,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. On 7 February they posted a footage of their performance for on their website. The new mix of "Raindrops" called "Jaxx Club Boot" was released as a

digital single In music, a single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. One can be released for sale to the public in a variety of formats. In most cases, a single is a song that is released separate ...

Production

Material

Critical reception

Promotion

Track listing

References

External links