Faithless; The Power Of Positive Thought

Just 5 months after breaking his pelvis in a serious car accident, Faithless frontman Maxi Jazz is back on the road confirming the key role positive thinking plays in recovering from ill health. Chatting to Skrufff's Angie Ng last weekend as Faithless passed through Kuala Lumpur, the cheerfully Buddhist rapper even revealed he's "actually glad the accident happened". Because the fracture, while being relatively minor, revealed much more serious damage from a previous car crash, he'd chosen to ignore.

"I do quite a bit of motor racing in my spare time and I had a horrendous shunt about 4-5 months earlier and injured myself quite severely; my shoulders, my spine, my ribcage and my pelvis were all significantly twisted around to the left side," said Maxi.

"So had I NOT had the pelvic injury I wouldn't have found out about that because we were doing shows. I'm actually glad it happened." Joining him for the interview was Sister Bliss, who also passed through Malaysia in January on a DJing trip (while Maxi recovered in hospital).


Skrufff (Angie Ng): Maxi, you're touring again after what looked like a dreadful car accident, how's your health now-

Maxi Jazz: "It's not fully back to normal yet. I still have fairly loose ligaments which will probably take another month or so to tighten up. Once they're tightened up then that means that my muscles contract as they normally and naturally do, they don't just pull my pelvis or any bone that's attached to it out of alignment which is what's happening right now."

Skrufff: You've made a remarkably speedy recovery…

Maxi Jazz: "Yeah. When you're injured, you concentrate pretty much 100% of your attention on getting better. During the day, you'd normally be concentrating on any number of half a dozen things or more things; your work, your girl friend, this, that, this, that, but if you focus on one thing, you get results. And if you have a lot of determination, which I was blessed with, then it makes things happen."

Skrufff: How much of that was down to your own attitude and Buddhist approach-

Maxi Jazz: "That's hard to quantify. I think probably all of it. Simply because my approach to life as a Buddhist is that my life and life itself is one inseparable thing, so those things that I need from life seem to come towards me. I had a great deal of help but that help didn't come from nowhere; I think that my Buddhist faith in some way, called those elements into my life that I needed to help me to get better as quickly as I could."

Skrufff: Changing to happier topics, Sister Bliss: I understand you're taking a houseful of friends to Ibiza this summer, what's been the most surreal or bizarre situation you've encountered there-

Sister Bliss: "Probably one of the most bizarre things I saw was this guy wondering around Manumission with a blow-up rubber doll…erm simulating sex with it in the middle of the dance floor, walking around just sort of grooving and bashing this rubber doll…so bizarre…a fully inflatable member of the opposite sex. It's like what on earth is going there-"

Skrufff: Smokin' Jo recently talked about missing being the centre of attention when she went on holiday for 3 weeks in January; is that an attitude you can relate to-

Sister Bliss: "I often feel like 'Oh my God, I hope I don't feel completely out of the loop' which is how I often feel if I've been away for a bit…'Oh my God, I don't know what the hot records are', because part of being a DJ is being an obsessive trainspotter and buying records and being sent them every week and always looking for the newest, freshest sounds and stuff. So yeah, sometimes I feel like 'Oh my God, I'm not even a valid DJ anymore, I haven't been near a record shop for 3 weeks and uhh' and that feels like a long time in music terms. It's just stupid paranoia but... I don't miss being the centre of attention, or crowds clapping or any of that. More often than not I'm on holiday at places I'm DJing at anyway, Tags

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