Artist of the Week: Faithless

We’re rolling out a brand new feature here at Skiddle HQ where we’ll be selecting an artist each week we want to throw a little love towards. We’ll be picking people from the full spectrum of the events you can find on our site, be them bands or DJs, singers or rappers, and giving you a little introduction to what they are about and why we love them. To launch it this week we picked a group that represent all of those roles and much more, the one and only Faithless.

Faithless formed in early 1995 and would deliver their first hit, ‘Salva Mea’, in July of the same year. It started almost 16 years of the band being at the pinnacle of electronic music, with a series of albums and singles ensuring their longevity as one of the most well-loved and revered groups in the genre across the globe.

Their appeal can be attributed to the three very different members who each add a unique component - the soft spoken word raps of Maxi Jazz, stadium sized sonics from Sister Bliss and the production and leadership of Rollo. The combination of the three has probably delivered some of your best moments in music; who hasn’t raised their first in euphoric salute in a field to the sounds of ‘Insomnia’ over the years? Or watched one of the groups brilliantly conceived videos?

Chances are you’ll also have loved either one of their studio albums or the classic mixes they delivered for Renaissance or Back to Mine. Whether headlining Glastonbury (see above) or creating timeless videos such as the one below for ‘We Come 1’, Faithless have undeniably left their imprint on the world, showcasing the power of what electronic music can deliver live. It was no surprise that they were voted by no less of an authority than Mixmag as the fourth greatest dance act of all time in 2012.

Although the group broke up at the Brixton Academy in April 2011, the legend has lived on in the shape of the Faithless Soundsystem, a stripped back version of the live band which focuses on the roots of the group as djs and vocalists alongside percussionist Sudha Kheterpal. This new incarnation of the group delivered a stunning set at Miami's Ultra Festival in March, and a Faithless DJ set from Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz combines with a live PA from them both on May 31^st when they return to the UK, and in particular the place where they ended it back in 2011, Brixton.

Tickets are now on sale for that event and as a parting gift we’ll leave you with our favourite Faithless anthem of them all, a record which defined the power of electronic music for many back in the late nineties. Maxi’s lyrics summed it up perfectly, ‘this is my church, this is where I heal my hurt’, and you’ve got to agree with them; god definitely is a DJ!

Tickets are no longer available for this event