Faithless: Sister Act.

Faithless play the Arena on Saturday.

We Come 1, the first single from Faithless's third album Outrospective, released last year, is partly inspired by the London-based trio's symbiotic live show. A memorable experience which Australian audiences will be able to enjoy this weekend when the group finally hit our shores following the cancellation of their Big Day Out appearance due to rapper Maxi Jazz breaking his pelvis in a car crash. Maxi Jazz will be joined on stage in Brisbane by DJ Sister Bliss but not by her reclusive co-producer Rollo Armstrong, Dido's big brother, who is not part of Faithless's live set-up and consequently will not journey down under with his band-mates.

"We Come 1 is not just about playing live, it's about clubs as well," says Bliss. "It's the point of doing music, being connected to other people. It's a very poignant thing. You're in a club and there are thousands of people who are all strangers but they're all on the same vibe. You often get that experience in a music concert. The audience is united in joy because they're having such a good time listening to the music. It's very rare that you get big crowds of people integrated and positively coming together.”

“We Come 1 refers to that but it's also about becoming one with yourself because unless you get on that road, you lead a very fractured, lonely existence. It's very hard to see what's good in other people if you can't feel anything good about yourself. Like most Faithless stuff, it operates on different levels. We Come 1 is about the experience of becoming one when you're at a concert or a club but, on the other hand, it's also about resolving stuff in yourself."

We Come 1 is a pumping, house anthem which treads a similar musical path to previous hit singles God Is A DJ and Insomnia which, in turn, have inspired inferior cheesy Euro-house tracks by the likes of Sash.

"It quite hard because Faithless have been associated with that even though there's so much different music on a Faithless record," says Bliss, who clearly doesn't welcome the comparison.

"In the beginning, it was very hard because we our music wasn't played on the radio and we really had just club support. You can't take anything for granted so we tended to select tracks for the first single from an album that were big club numbers because we knew that they would work in a club. In some ways, it would be nice not to have to do that but I'm really proud of the music we make. It's also misleading because not one track represents the Faithless sound. We Come 1 wouldn't point you in the direction of Evergreen or One Step Too Far, the Dido track on the album. We're trying to break the conventions but every time we release something that's not a thumping full-on record, it's very difficult for us because it's not something that people associate with Faithless. Mohammad Ali (Outrospective's second single) wasn't as successful as We Come 1 but you have to take risks in music."

According to Bliss, Outrospective's cover art - which features an ambiguous illustration of a dancing youth - best sums up Faithless's musical diversity.

"That comes from a book called Century and it was a picture of a riot in Paris in the 19th Century. What I love about it is that the guy looks like he's dancing and it kind of describes the word 'outrospective.' But actually he's throwing a Molotov cocktail at the forces of oppression. In some ways, that picture represents Faithless. We haven't done anything in a typical way. We advanced by not playing live, we were on a tiny independent label. We weren't just doing one thing to make it easy for the record-buying public."

The title Outrospective, meanwhile, was a happy accident.

"Rollo and I make the music and then we give it to Maxi to see if it inspires him lyrically," says Bliss. "So we played him some of the music we'd made and he said 'Wow, it's really different to (Faithless's last album) Sunday 8pm. It's not half as introspective.' And I said 'Yeah, its outrospective.' It just popped out of my mouth. The album has its melancholy moments, otherwise it wouldn't be Faithless, but it's more outward looking."

Outrospective is also Faithless's first album without former vocalist Jamie Catto, who left the band to work on his own project, One Giant Leap, a travelogue-style film and album which features artists from all over the world.

"Jamie directed a couple of Faithless videos and has now found his muse," says Bliss. "We like working with different people. Every album we've collaborated with people from Dido to Boy George. Jamie was someone who was on our first two albums, as was Dido. We've now found a new singer called Zoe Johnson and we wanted to work with her so it was time for Jamie to do his own thing. The main three people in the studio are Rollo, Maxi and me, and when we play live it's an eight-piece band. It keeps Faithless fresh if we keep working with different people. Maxi is the centrepiece, the focal point of Faithless and it's really nice to contrast him with other textures."