Sister Bliss interview – “my whole career started on the gay scene… Those clubs were places you could go and be yourself”
The Faithless legend prepares for a scrum
It’s undoubtedly a Faithless-sized assignment. Partly out of politeness and partly good old fashioned journalistic noseynes, we always like to ask an interviewee what they’ll be doing after kindly donating the time to talk to us.
“I’m preparing to play in front of 80,000 people at Twickenham on Saturday,” says Sister Bliss, chatting to us from her functional looking, frills-free studio in London’s King’s Cross. “I’m playing in between the women’s and the men’s rugby games,” she explains. “I’m a bit nervous but I’ve played in front of that many people before, I should be fine.”
It’s a sign not only of the ongoing phenomenon of Faithless themselves, and Sister Bliss’s continued devotion to her solo career when time allows, but also how far dance music itself has come from its roots in tiny, off-the-radar gay clubs in Chicago and dodging police roadblocks to find DIY parties in fields or abandoned warehouses.
Likewise, the fact that the producers of ‘The Crown’, looking for a 90s spin on the Hanz Zimmer theme tune to suit the timeline that the series had reached, turned to Faithless to do the business, is yet another indication of their household status. It’s not quite by royal appointment, but it’s pretty close. For Sister Bliss, though, it was the soundtrack royalty involved rather than the Windsors that made taking the job a no brainer. “I wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to remix Hans Zimmer,” she asserts.
We’re primarily here to discuss the new Sister Bliss single ‘Life Is A Melody’, more of which later. First, however, we feel sadly obliged to at least briefly grasp the unpleasant nettle that is the death of her Faithless comrade Maxi Jazz in late December 2022. While inevitably it was a shock, it hadn’t come out of the blue.
“Yes, we did know he was ill,” she says, visibly and understandably pained at discussing the matter. “It wasn’t in the public domain although he did put his own posts up on Facebook when he couldn’t make gigs. Let’s just say he came back from the brink a few times in the last few years. Never mind nine lives, he had twelve, or maybe a multiple of nine.”
The good news for Faithless fans is that work continues on a new album, and as we mentioned, in the meantime they have ‘Life Is A Melody’ to feast upon. A thoroughly rousing anthem and rollercoaster classic-in-waiting made with the duo Hyacinth & Apollo – she caught the pair playing a live set at a party in South London and invited them to collaborate – it has many of the euphoric hallmarks of a Faithess big hitter, as well as a spiritual element that Sister Bliss hopes shines through as well.
Originally inspired by the feeling of release that we all – and particularly those of us whose lives revolve around going out and enjoying music with others – experienced at the lifting of lockdown, Sister Bliss sees it as a double edged sword, with energy and sadness combining.
“I think it’s sort of got a melancholic bent, like a lot of things in life have,” she explains, “It’s about singing through your pain, through lockdown, yes, but also beyond, because life can be pretty alienating at times. I always try to express how much I love playing music and also being in the crowd dancing to it. Hopefully there’s a spiritual element to it as well – the middle section is like the harmonies washing away your pain. So it has energy, yes, but something soulful too.”
Initial sessions with all three collaborators in the studio immediately paid dividends. “It seemed to take on a bit of an ‘I Feel Love’ vibe, with a bit of Giorgio Moroder bass on it – I mean, if you’re going to appropriate anybody it might as well be the master of electronic music, really.”
Having taken ‘Life Is A Melody’ out on the road for a thorough road testing, placing it at different points in her DJ sets, next to Faithless classics and really fresh new club tracks alike, she’s feeling confident about its appeal. “I can sense people wanting to sing along even though they don;t know the words yet. That’s been encouraging.”
While dance music has indeed come a long way (baby) from its formative days, for Sister Bliss there’s still a direct link to its roots, a link she continues to foster. “Making music in the here and now there’s always a connection with those days,” she says.
“Modern life is built to divide, there’s such a divisive social and political world we live in today. Dance music is one of those things that just seems immune to it – thank god. It’s a place where people can come and not feel divided or feel fear or shame – that’s been a powerful thing for me since raving in the mid 80s really and it still holds true today.
“I was watching a film about the rave era and I was reminded of Castlemorton and just how difficult it was with the Criminal Justice Act and all that. We lived through that era of criminalising people for getting together and enjoying music. But it will never die – even the illegal ones, down in places like Devon they’re still going on. People will always find a way to congregate and get tribal.”
With the current social climate heading back to the intolerance of the 80s and early 90s, she says, such moments of communion become all then more important, “There’s a lot of hate crime about at the moment, a lot of racism, a lot of homophobia… People are scared. You can get attacked for the way you look or for holding hands with someone of the same sex.”
Despite ongoing attacks from government, either legislative or through draining funds for music in schools and the arts in general, dance music has continued to grow its own tightly knit communities, often where society’s own have broken down. “Thatcher said there was no such thing as society,” she says, “but she was fucking wrong.”
It’s very much with that in mind that Sister Bliss is delighted to have ‘Life Is A Melody’ released by the defiantly inclusive He.She.They label. Not only does it reflect her own first steps as a DJ, travelling to New York in 1990 and witnessing the gay scene’s close association with house music, to her first gigs in similar clubs in the UK and her first productions. “They seem to have a certain camp energy to them,” she says, looking back in hindsight, “and my whole career started on the gay scene because those clubs were places you could go and be yourself.”
As well as that inclusivity, the label is not just a label, but actively promotes parties too, creating a link between music being made and offering “a freedom from the shackles of heteronormal behaviour”.
“It’s more than that,” she says, “they’re really fresh and energetic, they’re a platform, they’ve got a fashion label, it’s very DIY just like the way people used to press records and sell them out of the back of a van, and DJ and promote, all at the same time.
“It’s very important, as well, to have a label that supports women, too, because the music industry is very male dominated. I think they’re doing what they can to redress the balance and represent a multiplicity of people and experiences.”
“There are a lot of things about this tune that have that feeling of ‘coming full circle’ about them,” Sister Bliss concludes, before we leave her to her late afternoon’s task of preparing to impart just a bit of that message to Twickenham’s 80,000 rugby fans. It’s a mission – one of many in fact – for which her place in rave heaven is surely assured.
Ben Willmott
‘Life Is A Melody’ is released on March 17