THERE are few house music acts that survived the 1990s to make it into the homes of the ordinary record-buying public. But one act not only became a 'crossover' success but has managed to headline festivals that include Glastonbury and this year's Electric Picnic.

Chances are you have somewhere in your CD collection a copy of Basement Jaxx's 1999 debut Remedy or even the follow-up Rooty.

Maybe you missed them at the time and bought last year's singles collection (which went to No 1 in the UK selling almost one million copies) or quite possibly you are aware of their most recognisable (and, unfortunately, one of their most inane) songs 'Where's Your Head At?'.

What is probable, however, is that like most people you haven't a clue who the people behind the music actually are, confused by all the Brazilian dancers and numerous guest vocalists and musicians that make up their diverse, and often incoherent, sound. I wasn't really sure myself until last year when the Brixton duo of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe were called on to fill the boots of the ill Kylie Minogue at the Glastonbury festival. The show was a carnival of dance that provided the perfect closing signature of happy vibes and inclusivity that marks them out among the often too-cool-forskool 'rave' or 'dance' acts.

Ironically, the band's genesis can be traced back to such an underground, DIY ethos. Brixton during the late 1980s was a paradox. City types mixed with druggies as restaurants and pubs began to catch on to the burgeoning generation of youngsters armed with a set of decks and a bunch of vinyl, their common aim being to get out of their heads and dance.

Ratcliffe remembers the times for their excitement and edge; the sense that something was changing, bringing people together even if it was for just one night. And music was morphing in exciting ways. Drum 'n' bass, urban, hardhouse, techno, trance. A lot of black music was being rediscovered. "It was weird, " says the well spoken Ratcliffe in reflection. "We played in a restaurant that turned into a club. You had a tension with the mixture of people: the yuppies and the crack heads. What we were doing didn't really have a market. It was underground.

Some people knew what we were playing but most didn't. There was a real edge to it."

Buxton, already a DJ, and Ratcliffe, a guitarist in a funk band, met in 1993, through friends of friends, and cobbled together their first EPs on weekends. Buxton had been putting on parties and was interested in writing and recording. Ratcliffe used his student loan to buy a sampler and a keyboard: a studio in other words. "It's what you did back then, " he chuckles.

"You didn't buy a rock guitar, you bought decks." It was a different time musically. They used to play in the grimy recess of an Irish bar in Brixton. "It's long gone now, " says Ratcliffe. "Now it's a trendy wine bar."

The white-label phenomenon was another factor driving the music. With as little as £500 "you could have a CD in the shops in two or three weeks and be having DJs playing it in clubs. You weren't sitting around waiting for a fat A&R man to come and give you the seal of approval. It was just so instant."

The reluctant duo were offered a recording contract. "We never saw ourselves as a band but as producers. Labels were insistent on us becoming a band. They had seen the success of Daft Punk."

The first album came easily, however, when they got their "heads around being a band". "We have always been made up of very different personalities. The music has always been a journey. We try to get it all on record which is sometimes to our detriment. We might try out a big banging track for the clubs and then do something abstract and weird and then something jazzy. The albums let us really go for it."

With the second album and 'Where's Your Head At?', they launched into the Top Of The Pops market. "Having a good second album really helped, " says Ratcliffe. "It was so strange to become so big. I always felt why can't the music just speak for itself? Why do we have to do all these interviews?

I always felt uncomfortable being analysed."

The costumes, dances and collaborators built up gradually. "We were friendly with the Brazilian community and just gathered together this collective. When it came to touring we found that instead of just having us two dweebs pushing knobs and playing records [like the Chemical Brothers] we thought we would bring a couple of people along and make an event of itf I think what myself and Felix were trying to do was take the attention off ourselves.

Acts like the Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk usually say here we are, here's our equipment and here we go which completely suits them and is great but we just felt really boring. . . Our music also has more vocals, more human personalities;

there are little people everywhere in our music and it would be weird if the details weren't represented on stage. The Chemicals and Daft Punk to name but two the music is a lot more stripped down and sounds like it's coming from two boxes. We needed to represent the humanity. . ."

These 'little people' include Lily Allen on Basement Jaxx's fourth studio album, Crazy Itch Radio, released ealier this year. After hearing her CD they invited her into the studio. "We've not made enough of this, " laughs Ratcliffe. "In the light of her new-found fame we should have put it on the press release and shouted about it. But she features very subtly on it so it wouldn't be fair." She sings on 'When Lights Go Down' as part of a chorus.

Other guests include Canadian singer Martina Bang, whose father is the Ontario finance minister, and Robin Carlsson, a grammyaward winning artist in Sweden and singer of the rave classic 'Show Me Love'. Impossible to bring the many who have worked with the band on tour, the duo make up for it through the sheer scale and pomp of the live show.

"There'll be a crew of 20 for the Dublin show, " continues Ratcliffe, "all the dancers, a brass section, the full works." It's a far cry from a dingy Irish boozer in Brixton.

Crazy Itch Radio is out now on XL Basement Jaxx play the Point Theatre Dublin on Saturday