![]() The potency of Maxi’s lyrics came from the palpable sense that he didn’t see himself as a god at all, but as a messenger, even as Faithless collected Mercury Prize and BRIT Award nominations and headlined festivals from Glastonbury to EXIT to Coachella. “This is my church/This is where I heal my hurts/For tonight, God is a DJ/This is my church,” Maxi intones, legitimising the ritual of raving over hypnotic, biblical synths. “Through his Buddhist practice he had a real blueprint for living a kind and abundant life and understanding that we are all one and he experienced it very profoundly and wrote about it.” Proving Faithless’ impact well beyond clubland, the band’s songs found fans in the likes of R.E.M’s Michael Stipe and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, who named 2004 protest song 'Mass Destruction' – which sees Maxi taking on misinformation, war, racism and inaction – as the track he wishes he wrote most in an interview with Q magazine.Įncouraged by the reaction to 'Insomnia', which attracted a huge global audience after Pete Tong pushed for a re-release of the track in 1996, Maxi more explicitly addressed the cleansing potential of clubbing in 'God Is DJ', taken from their 1998 sophomore album 'Sunday 8pm'. “Maxi spoke so eloquently about what it is to be a human being and navigate this very tricky thing called life,” says Sister Bliss. Social causes and Buddhist principles would characterise much of his lyrical output throughout his time with Faithless, which spanned 21 years and six albums until he left the group in 2016, forming a blues-reggae band called Maxi Jazz & The E-Type Boys the same year. Maxi touched on insomnia, hardship and the importance of self-love across Faithless’ debut album, 'Reverence' - his patent desperation and the band’s chosen name at odds with his own Soka Gakkai Buddhist faith. ![]() “Rollo asked him to write lyrics about frustration, like what it feels like to be so frustrated in your own skin that you just want to escape.” “And we just chatted and chatted about his philosophy and what it meant to be a Buddhist and all about our taste in music and then we made our first record which was 'Salva Mea',” she recalled. A friend had connected Sister Bliss with “an amazing rapper from Brixton who’s a Buddhist,” she told Mixmag on December 26, three days after Maxi passed away after a long illness. After he was introduced to keyboardist, producer and songwriter Sister Bliss, Faithless the band was born almost instantaneously. Maxi was a hip hop DJ who fronted the Soul Food Cafe band and hosted pirate radio shows for a decade before he met producer Rollo in a London studio in 1995. “I had an electricity meter and when the money ran out you’d get six or seven pounds of credit and then – “Boom!” – the lights would go out. “The lines about having no electricity and reaching for the pen in the darkness were also from real life,” he told The Guardian in 2020. His “I can’t get no sleep” refrain” has consistently thrilled millions of bug-eyed clubbers since the track was released in 1995, even though its writer’s inspiration came from a very different place. Maxi Jazz had recently suffered from a sleep-depriving tooth abscess when he penned Faithless’ most enduring hit, 'Insomnia'.
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