August 21, 1998

Sunday 8pm

Faithless shouldn't work. A dreamy aggregation of black and white, boy and girl, house and hip-hop, songs and grooves...

8 / 10 FAITHLESS SHOULDN'T WORK. A DREAMY aggregation of black and white, boy and girl, house and hip-hop, songs and grooves; a mad mish-mash of ideas and influences that ought to result only in records for post-This Life young professionals.

But no. Faithless are London's Massive Attack: a DJ-centric collective who incorporate the many elements of the capital's club musics into a living, breathing whole. The main difference is that while Massive rely heavily on Bristol's dub and reggae scenes for their musical base, Faithless tap into the euphoric, quasi-religious highs of house.

Faithless went from faceless dance bods to worldwide stars courtesy of the '97 hit 'Insomnia' and million-selling debut LP 'Reverence'. That record - the sound of different voices struggling to speak as one, which worked only sporadically, but on those occasions quite brilliantly - earned the band a big enough audience to spend the next year touring the globe. 'Sunday 8pm', a stronger and less scattershot album, is the document of those times.

The record slips easily from up-tempo spirituals (the Top Ten hit 'God Is A DJ') through downbeat reflections ('Why Go?', co-written with and featuring Boy George) and folksy flourishes ('Hem Of His Garment'). This is largely due to the unifying presence of rapper Maxi Jazz, who emerges here as a songwriter of rare poetical insight. 'Postcards' incorporates snatches of Erik Satie to accompany his brief missives home to Mrs Jazz from an American tour, and is well-observed, funny and poignant. 'Bring My Family Back' casts Maxi as a confused child, a depressed father and finally a crack house looking back to better days. 'Take The Long Way Home' taps into those unsettling paranoid late-night moments, and 'Killer's Lullaby' provides a disturbing signing-off.

There are times where their cheek and eclecticism get the better of them - 'Hour Of Need''s take on Beck's 'Odelay' template is too blatant, and a particularly unpleasant metaphor for female genitalia does needless damage to 'She's My Baby'. Otherwise 'Sunday 8pm' proves that Faithless have become one of Britain's better and more important bands. A reason to believe, in fact.

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