CULTURE INTERVIEW
Building on a 30-year career, dance music pioneers Faithless returned to the stage last year with renewed energy – and now they’re bringing the rave to Newmarket. Louise Hoffman catches up with founding member Sister Bliss ahead of the show FAITH Keeping the
T hink of 90s dance and rave culture, and it’s pretty likely that Faithless are one of the first bands climbing onto that strobe-lit stage of your imagination. Their music was the soundtrack to an era of total surrender to sound – and still today, despite the prevailing trend for experiences lived through camera phones, their audiences are fully immersed. “Well, you just can’t mosh with a phone,” laughs musician, DJ and co-founding force of Faithless, Sister Bliss. “I try not to look up too much or I’ll play the wrong notes, but I want to engage – I want people to know that we’re experiencing them while we’re playing – and it’s always really gratifying to see people lost in the music and up on each other’s shoulders going mad. “It just blows my mind – what can I say. Energy is energy, whether it’s now or whether it was back then.” I wanted to talk more about that 90s vibe, though – especially the very first gig that Faithless ever performed. “That was at The Jazz Cafe in London, and it was pretty wild!” Bliss recalls. “We only did the show because our first album Reverence was barely selling, and our radio pluggers were desperate to showcase that it was more than just dance tracks. We had a bit of connection in the clubs with Salva Mea and Insomnia but they hadn’t blown up like they did – we rereleased them subsequently and they became global hits. “But the buzz was growing, and that night there was an absolute roadblock, which was quite bananas. I recall Sasha and Paul Oakenfold were on the list, but they couldn’t even get near the club, so we had to throw their tickets out of the dressing room window so they could grab them!” Bliss also recalls some of the humorously rookie moments of those early days: “In the first release of Reverence ,
we messed up – we chose a really lovely cardboard sleeve, but it was the wrong size and you couldn’t rack it in Woolworths or the record shops,” she laughs. “Of course, now it’s a collector’s item! But back then, it was this ridiculous album that didn’t fit anywhere, and so we got lots of returns and only sold 16 copies a week for the first few weeks… which we thought was amazing! “That’s the other thing; perception was very different then. But you start a ripple, don’t you? It only takes a little drop and things start to happen. It was only meant to be a one-off show at The Jazz Cafe, but then they offered us a European tour, and the record started going up and up in the German charts. Then all the venues we were playing at got upgraded and it was this wild, chaotic time where – having only really played The Jazz Cafe to 400 people – we were suddenly playing to 5,000 people in a Mercedes factory with the Fugees!” It was during this European takeover that the British press started to cotton on to the enormity of the band’s potential – and in those pre- and nascent days of the internet, media interest was absolutely imperative to success. “Obviously, you had people experiencing your gig in the flesh and word would spread to the next city, ‘God, have you seen this band?’. But the music press were the gatekeepers,” Bliss acknowledges. “So, early interviews in the NME and Melody Maker , as well as support from Muzik Magazine by editor Ben Turner were all really important. “But of course, that was coupled with underground club support. When people were falling in love with the record, they didn’t have Shazam – they’d have to go and ask the DJ, ‘what’s that tune?’. I used to go to raves and stand next to the DJ to
MAXIMUM ENERGY Faithless at the Roundhouse – as part of their return to live performance
24 AUGUST 2025 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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