The two girls sit on a huge rocking chair, and their heads are alight. Crucially, none of that overshadowed the band's innovative music. Acknowledging such disparate predecessors as Led Zeppelin and the Velvet Underground, the Jane's sound, with Eric Avery on bass and Stephen Perkins on drums, augmented the traditional hard-rock palette with steel drums, Spanish spoken-word, Eastern European fiddle and more. Their first manager prostituted herself to help to finance the outfit, and Farrell and his guitarist, Dave Navarro, have battles with heroin addiction behind them. The group's lyrics and artwork have also provoked controversy, not least the furore caused by the release of their 1988 album Nothing's Shocking. The problem, US censors felt, was the album's cover photograph, which shows a papier-m??culpture of naked Siamese twins by Farrell and his girlfriend of the time, Casey Niccoli.

We get sanitised in our mid-twenties and think about how we react. A life lived in fear is a life half lived."'Kish Kash' is out now on XL Recordings. Old people who dealt with intense things and young kids who are open canvases don't worry so much. "When I see old rock bands on stage I always think 'Let the young ones in.' There are loads of cool young kids out there who have a lot more to say."Buxton is concerned his generation worries too much about being cool "We need to be lighter. "He could sing, was humble and flattered us loads, so that worked," quips Buxton.The new-look Basement Jaxx are abandoning Rooty, their word of mouth club night He thinks it's time to hand over to a new generation. At first, Basement Jaxx were suspicious of his pop past but he ended up on the album.

They're waking up again."Recently they were summoned to meet Janet Jackson. She initially mistook them for another British team to which prompted Buxton to call her C?ne Dion. "There wasn't a lot of laughter because she was so uptight." But despite this, a single collaboration with La Jackson is planned.Another star looking for "cool producers to give him cred" was JC from NSync, Justin Timber-lake's old boy-band mate. "People have always asked 'What are all the noises going on in your sound?' I think it's a reflection of the fact there are so many TV channels and programmes on how to sort out your life. You need to make sense of everything, that's what we're doing. I've always been serious about what we do."Referring to the situation in Iraq, Buxton is excited about rising political consciousness in the UK "It's the first time people have cared about stuff for ages. The quality had gone down because it was in a progressive cocaine stage.