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Dance music is just not enough. Or at least not always--even for Simon Ratcliffe. He’s half of Basement Jaxx, the acclaimed London duo that has built its reputation by mixing classic house beats with a variety of pop music genres. The pair has even revealed a weakness for, of all things, guitars and human vocals amid the electronic beats.

That can be a controversial notion to some of the dance world’s true believers. In those circles, anything but hard, urgent beats can often be heard as heresy. It’s an affliction that struck Moby in his early days, when he first began straying from dance techno beats to dabble in something approaching hard-core punk and pop.

Ratcliffe and his partner, Felix Buxton, wisely have other ideas, an interest in variety that helped make the Basement Jaxx’s fun-minded debut album, “Remedy,” one of last year’s most acclaimed albums. The Face, the trend-setting British magazine, has hailed Basement Jaxx as being responsible for “bringing the party back to Britain.” The album was named one of the 20 best of the year in the Village Voice’s annual poll of U.S. pop critics.

“Dance people are boring,” says Ratcliffe, wearily. “Not all of them. But this whole obsession with being purist and keeping it underground and stuff, I don’t really understand that. Music is music, and a lot of underground music is really, really dull. We’re not impressed by that sort of thing.”

Ratcliffe, 30, and Buxton, 29, have faith in their own interpretation of that dance sound, but when Basement Jaxx returns to the U.S. this summer for a tour, fans will see more than a pair of Englishmen bent over samplers and turntables. The duo will be joined by huge video screens, three singers, two dancers, a percussionist and Ratcliffe on occasional lead guitar.

The image of a heroic rock god on electric guitar was once a childhood dream for Ratcliffe. It’s a dream he ultimately outgrew, though the organic guitar textures found in such tracks as “Rendez-Vu” epitomize the depth of the Basement Jaxx sound.

Even so, it was a difficult threshold to cross, inspiring the occasional moment of doubt. During the recording of “Remedy” early last year, Buxton and Ratcliffe briefly hesitated when rock guitars were about to be added to the mix.

“We played some rock guitar on there, and we were like, ‘Oh my God, people are going to be horrified, it’s going to freak people out,’ ” Ratcliffe remembers. “Then when it came out, no one even mentioned the rock guitar. Nobody even noticed it. And we were so aware of it.”

Ratcliffe discovered American dance music via the business travels of his father, an industrial engineer, who always returned home with the latest dance and R&B; albums under his arm. Among those ‘70s discs were the influential “Car Wash” soundtrack and music by Rose Royce and other popular R&B; acts.

By the late ‘80s, London radio began spinning revolutionary new discs that introduced Ratcliffe’s generation to early hip-hop and house music. “It all sounded so cool and exciting,” he says.

He was already playing guitar by then, and he eventually met Buxton in 1993, both of them sharing a passion for the genre called Chicago house music. House music first erupted from the dance clubs of Chicago, New York and, later, London, with a tough blend of relentless beats and melody. The genre remains a core influence on electronic pop music in Europe and the U.S., from the hard beats of France’s Daft Punk to the trance music of Maryland’s BT.

“The first time I heard house music, the amazing thing was how wrong it all sounded,” Ratcliffe says. “It sounded like you shouldn’t be doing that. It sounded completely unorthodox. It sounded very futuristic. It was very minimalist. It would pick a mood or a vibe and it would build on that and go on and on and on. It was reflective music. It was music you close your eyes to and let it wash over you.

“It wasn’t done by musicians. It had an edge to it. A lot of samples would come in and be slightly out of tune or slightly out of time. Things were slightly at odds with each other within a track. And that was exciting. It was rebelling.”

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The duo soon began hosting parties at restaurants, abandoned warehouses and clubs, where the far-reaching Basement Jaxx sound first began to jell. They would eventually begin referring to the sound as “punk garage,” even if that label is misleading. The sound remains rooted in electronics, but with a willingness to stretch beyond the perceived boundaries of the genre.

“A lot of British and European music had taken the house music formula but had made it less formula and cheaper,” Ratcliffe says. “It seemed to be music written just for people who take drugs, in a way. It was very functional. It had its effect, its crescendos and its falls that helped people’s drugs kick in. For Felix and I, that wasn’t really why we were in it.”

Even before the release of “Remedy,” the duo’s success on the London club scene meant they were regularly courted by other corners of the pop music world. But they ultimately turned down requests by the likes of Madonna and the Manic Street Preachers to create dance remixes of pop singles.

The duo is not eager to work hard on the records of others and let precious ideas slip away. Besides, becoming the maker of lucrative dance remixes for others would categorize the band in a genre it has already left behind.

“Even though that inspired us when we started, we’re not that excited by house music anymore,” Ratcliffe says. “There are some good house tracks, but none of us are excited by the whole club scene or any of that. For us, that’s where we started, but we just want to do music, futuristic music, and we use computers and samples to make these things happen. But making a house record is not a priority for us anymore. We just want to make good music that excites us.”