Faithless

Music is a strange business, and I’d like to think of the business-part of it for a moment: Living in Europe you get loads of American bands travelling through Europe, but many European bands – although super-stars in Europe – are mainly fresh water as soon as they leave the continent.
Roby Williams is such an example, that kid’s been trying to get into the American market ever since he left Take That in the early nineties. Another – though less famous – example is Faithless. The duo from London – with a third man behind the scenes – that’s been around for some 10 years now has revolutionized Trance, Tecno and Trip Hop with their sound-experiments. For years Faithless have been the only Techno-Trance band who played their songs live on stage with a complete band. Every album has a different key, and the new one ‘To All New Arrivals’ makes no difference: The loud Tecno-Sound known from songs like ‘Insomnia’, ‘Salva Mea’ or ‘God Is A DJ’ is gone, and the music is very relaxing now – almost with a touch of Pink Floyd. And again they’ve had a good hand in choosing the additional musicians: Where else would Cass Fox’ voice fit in better that in Faithless – and the footprints left by names like Dido didn't make that an easy task.

Last night Faithless played in Winterthur. The hall wasn't all too big, only about 2000 people. This gave the concert more the ambience of a club-concert. Maxi Jazz was at his peak again, Sister Bliss showed her typical British coolness all through the show. And as usual the show was breath-taking! Audiences in Switzerland tend to be rather standoffish, but Faithless is one of the few bands that get the laziest crowd jumping. I guess the example – taking from a show a couple of years ago – says more than a thousand words...