Faithless – Champion Sound

Faithless’s eighth studio album starts with a collage of warped synths, angelic chords and a spoken word snippet pulled from Maxi Jazz’s final recording session. With warmth, the UK group’s late frontman leaves his posthumous imprint on ‘Forever Free’, lending one instruction: “be completely you as you can be”. The proceeding cuts heed his words, injecting hope, love and joy into the vast and varied, ‘Champion Sound’. Delivered in four sides, the LP soars across the sonic universe, with poppy selections like ‘Dollars and Dimes’ featuring Bebe Rexha, the disco-tinged ‘In Your Own Groove’ with LSK and a dubby title track landing worlds apart. Whether the untraditional structure diminishes the collection’s emotional impact or boosts it, is debatable. However, one thing is clear: ‘Champion Sound’ is a celebration — of life, of loss and of the damn good times in between. Feel it all.