Unlike the acts calling themselves “the fill-in-the-blank brothers,” the guys who make up organic groove team Faze Action actually are blood brothers. Simon and Robin Lee share the same parentage, as well as an unrelenting love for all types of music, which is reflected in its deep, imaginative and wildly musical American debut, Moving Cities (F-111/Warners).

Simon’s background is DJ-driven, having worked in a reggae record shop for a few years and growing up in London’s vibrant dance scene. Robin started at the age of eight on a more traditional route by picking up the cello after seeing a Stray Cats video and thinking a cello is as close as you can get to a double bass. By the age of 14 he moved onto a real bass guitar. Later at university, Robin studied music technology where he says he realized that the only real education came from the experience of sitting in front of the machines and actually playing with them.

By 1995, after being in bands playing anything from jazz, Latin, blues, soul, and funk, Robin became fed up and left to live in Japan. At this point, Simon was becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of good new records and was thinking about making one himself, just so he could have something to play out. “Simon had been bugging me to make a track and I was a bit of a snob,” chuckles Robin. “I was like, ‘You’re a DJ; I’m a musician.’ I agreed to make a track with him, then I’d go to Japan. So we made ‘Original

Disco Motion,’ which is on the first album [Plans And Designs]. Nuphonic picked it up and signed it the day I left. After that, Simon had these beats and basslines and sent a tape to me and said, ‘Just write something, just get it down now.’ I had about half an hour to write something down and send it to him and that was ‘In The Trees.’ I wrote it on manuscript paper and sent it to him in the post. Apart from two of the tracks, everything was written like that on the first album. He would give me the beats first. I put the melodies and the bassline to it and then send it back.”

Where the very classical strings-oriented Plans And Designs worked as an entire piece of music, Moving Cities, Faze Action’s second album, leans more toward individual songs. Keeping some of the string elements and incorporating African, Brazilian, Latin grooves, the Faze Action boys expand further into beat-friendly territory, but keep their distinct musical personalities intact. The Lees also carry over two tunes from the first album (ethereal floor movers “In The Trees” and “Turn the Point”) for the domestic version of Moving Cities. “When [Robin] came back and we started on [Moving Cities], we were at each others throats,” laughs Simon. “We didn’t have a tune for ages. We were going in the studio thinking everything was crap. We finally settled down and did ‘Kariba’ and it worked out OK.”

Using Steinberg’s Cubase sequencing program as the heart of the project, plus an Akai S900 sampler, a Fostex 8-track tape machine, a Soundcraft mixing desk and various sound modules, Faze Action creates its music 99-percent live. “The only thing that we cut up and is not directly created by us is some of the beats,” clarifies Robin. “Everything else is live. We wrote it. We created it. We played it. We make the music and the root we use is the technology.”

Their live show, which has only come about at the time of Moving Cities, when Robin moved back to the U.K., features drums, keyboards, trumpet, saxophone, a string quartet, Robin on bass, Simon on the decks and percussion, and Zeke Manyika on vocals. “[The live show] is really big for us at the moment,” says Simon. “Because Zeke’s involved, we’ve got a frontman that’s very charismatic. That’s another thing – it’s not two blokes standing behind the computer. It’s different and good. You got to have someone at the front, giving it the lead. When people see that, they’ll get what it’s about. I think it’s difficult for people to understand where it’s coming from and what it’s all about, but the live thing is honest.”

 – Lily Moayeri