What’s On spoke to Sister Bliss from electronica band Faithless ahead of their performance at Beats on the Beach on Saturday, November 28.

British electronica band Faithless, best know for their mighty dance tracks (such as Insomnia), will be performing live on the Corniche this Saturday, November 28 as part of Beats on the Beach. The trio – Maxi Jazz, Sister Bliss and Rollo – split up four years ago, but reunited in February for the groups 20th anniversary and will headline at the free-to-attend beach concert during Race Weekend. What’s On spoke to Sister Bliss ahead of their gig to find out more.

Now that you guys are back from retirement, are you back for good?
We don’t know yet, we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see what everybody is up to in 2016, but right now we’re supporting our Faithless 2.0 album.

Tell us about when you decided to take a break in 2011.
It wasn’t my decision to stop, Maxi kinda wanted a break and he was the one that called time on it.

What made you guys decide to come back?
I realised in the bath a couple of years ago that it was going to be our twentieth anniversary and I thought it would be really cool to commemorate it by releasing the greatest hits, because they’ve all been bootlegged by various DJs and producers. So in some ways Faithless never went away.

And really, since the day we stopped touring, people have not stopped asking, “When are you guys coming back?” It’s been amazing to have been missed, really amazing. So I guess we got worn down from the resistance.

Can you describe the group in terms of band dynamics? 
Well Maxi, if you know, is the front man and he’s in charge of writing lyrics. That’s his vibe. I write all the music and do the programming. Rollo takes my music and kinda mucks about with it. He is pretty much the producer as well, we co-produce things together. And he also writes some of the lyrics for the songs that Maxi doesn’t write. But we all come from quite different parts of town musically, so it’s really interesting when our tastes intersect.

Can we talk about your collaborations? Who have been the best people you’ve worked with over the course of your twenty-year career?
That is a big question. I mean on our last album we had some great collaborators from Dougy (Dougy Mandagi) from The Temper Trap who has got the most amazing voice right through to Dido.

This time round, on our 2.0 album, we commissioned remixes so we don’t actually work with the remixers. We ask them to revisit, if you like, our classic tracks and put their own spin on it. So it’s been a really interesting adventure so far.

You’ve played in Dubai before, but is this you’re first time performing in Abu Dhabi?
It’s not my first time, but it will be for quite a few people in the band. I DJ’d at the Grand Prix last year, which was an awful lot of fun. The hotel, the architecture and the beach…it was absolutely amazing.

Is there anybody you haven’t worked with yet that you really want to?
There are loads of people and artists with amazing voices. I see Adele has just come out of extended maternity leave and is fairly welcomed to give me a call (laughs). The Weeknd is currently killing it at the moment; I think he has an amazing voice. There’s this fantastic South African artist called Black Coffee and he’s a very cool dude. Hoping we will get to work with him. Yeah, so it’s a huge list of artists, I could go on all day.

You’ve said earlier that you guys aren’t pop stars in the conventional sense. So what happens after the big shows?
We all live very normal lives. We are not out at various venues to be seen. As I say, we just kinda do our things. We’re all very involved with music, we write a lot, I still DJ. I’m in the studio a lot. I do a radio show, so I spend quite a bit of time preparing and recording that every week. And also we’ve got families, well Rollo and myself do, so we’re pretty busy with our kids as well.

We’ve been hearing rumours online that there’s going to be a new album and new material in the future….
We don’t know yet. But we’ve been doing some collaborations in the studio with some very cool artists and it would be very exciting if we get the chance to make it the basis of a brand new album. So we’ll kind of see how it goes, so you just have to watch this space.

What are you going to be doing at Beats On The Beach?
We’ll be playing our biggest hits and some of the lesser known ones as well in a great set. We have eight live musicians on stage with an amazing live laser show that is going to rock from front to back.

Asides from your gig, what are you most looking forward to on race weekend?
I think watching the race is going to be amazing. What I’d really like to do is watch the actual finale, that would be incredible.

Are you a big racing fan?
I kinda like the finals…(laughs). Maxi is the big racing fan; he actually races cars himself and is very enthusiastic about it. So he is the main man, but I definitely enjoy watching, especially when it is a nail-biting finale.