The Chemical Brothers
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May 6, 2021THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS
The Chemical Brothers are an English electronic music duo formed by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons in Manchester in 1989.
They were pioneers in bringing the big beat genre to the forefront of pop culture.
They released their debut album Exit Planet Dust and it eventually went on to sell over a million copies worldwide
The album’s name was announced in November 2018.
The album takes its name from a line in the poem Geography by the New York poet Michael Brownstein, whose reading of it is sampled on the title track.
The album’s cover is an image taken from the booklet of the 1977 album Consequences by Godley & Creme
. The artwork is that of a motorway or autobahn from the point of view of the rear of an early British Chieftain main battle tank turret;
looking out over the gun, behind the commander of the tank, toward the empty highway ahead. The ‘cloud face’ on the cover of ‘Consequences’ is visible in the sky.
The Darkness That You Fear’
“Let your heart see the colours all around you,” a looping refrain urges on ‘The Darkness That You Fear’.
The line is a fitting summary of The Chemical Brothers’ decades-long career, where night skies and dim clubs have served as canvases for their laser beams and colourful mixes. The duo find kinship with that darkness again on their new single.
Packed with euphoric builds, jubilant chord progressions and psychedelic textures, it’s a kaleidoscopic gem that tells you there’s no need to be afraid.
Tom Rowlands was born in Kingston upon Thames on 11 January 1971. When he was very young, his family relocated to Henley-on-Thames.
He later attended Reading Blue Coat School in Berkshire. In his early teens, his interest in music broadened to other genres. Initially, some of his favourites included
the Oh What a Lovely War soundtrack, 2 Tone, the nascent gothic rock genre (The Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim)
and the electro sounds of artists such as Kraftwerk, New Order, Cabaret Voltaire,
and Heaven 17. He described the first Public Enemy album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, as “the record that probably changed his life”, and commented that “Miuzi Weighs a Ton” was “one of the most amazing tracks he had ever heard”.
Rowlands also started collecting hip hop records by artists like Eric B and Schoolly D. Rowlands left school with similar accomplishments to Simons, achieving nine O levels and three A levels. He went on to study history at the University of Manchester, where he met Simons in 1989
Rowlands chose Manchester primarily to immerse himself in its music scene in general and the Haçienda in particular.
Rowlands and Simons then started to DJ at a club called “Naked Under Leather” in the back of a pub in 1992, under the alias, “The 237 Turbo Nutters”
(named after the number of their house on Dickenson Road in Manchester and a reference to their Blackburn raving days). The pair would play hip hop, techno, and house.
The two called themselves the Dust Brother after the US production duo famous for their work with the Beastie Boys
. After a while, Rowlands and Simons began to run out of suitable instrumental hip hop tracks to use, so they started to make their own.
Using a Hitachi hi-fi system, a computer, a sampler, and a keyboard, they recorded “Song to the Siren”, which sampled This Mortal Coil.
“Song to the Siren” was released on their own record label, which they called “Diamond Records” (after Ed’s nickname).
At this point the Dust Brothers were the first-ever backroom DJ’s in the ‘Sumptuous Locarno Lounge’at ‘The Job Club‘ in Gossips night club in Dean Street, Soho from April 1992 till April 1993.
Around June 1993, the Dust Brothers recorded their first remixes
.The first was “Packet of Peace” for Justin Robertson’s Lionrock group, followed by songs from Leftfield, Republica, and the Sandals.
Later in 1993, Rowlands and Simons completed work on their Fourteenth Century Sky EP, released in January 1994.
It contained the groundbreaking “Chemical Beats”, which epitomised the duo’s genre-defining big beat sound.
The EP also contained “One Too Many Mornings”, which for the first time showed their less intense, more chilled-out side. Both “One Too Many Mornings” and “Chemical Beats” would later appear on their debut album.
Fourteenth Century Sky was followed later in 1994 by the My Mercury Mouth EP.“Chemical Beats” was also part of the soundtrack for the first edition of the Wipeout game series, having been featured in Wipeout for the PlayStation in 1995.
During the 1995 Glastonbury Festival, Rowlands and Simons had another conversation with Noel Gallagher.
Gallagher told them how much he liked Exit Planet Dust, and asked if he could sing on a future track, similar to the way Tim Burgess had worked on “Life Is Sweet”.
They did not think much of the offer at the time, given how busy Gallagher would be with the release of Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, plus the complexities of dealing with each other’s record companies. However, the duo later worked on a track which they thought would benefit from having a vocal on it.
They sent Gallagher a tape of what they had done so far. He worked on it overnight, and left a message with them early the next morning that he was ready to record it.
The track was called “Setting Sun” and was finally released in October 1996.
It entered the UK charts at the top, giving the duo their first ever Number One single.
“Setting Sun” was backed by a longer instrumental version, and also a new track “Buzz Tracks”, which was not much more than a DJ tool.
The three remaining members of the Beatles’ lawyers later wrote to the Chemical Brothers, mistakenly claiming that they had sampled “Tomorrow Never Knows”.
Virgin Records hired a musicologist to prove that they did not sample the song.
Meanwhile, in 1996, Live at the Social Volume 1 was released by Heavenly Records,
which became the Chemical Brothers’ first mix CD (excluding Xmas Dust Up, a free album that came in a 1994 issue of NME). It was also the duo’s first live album
In March 1997, the Brothers released the second track from their forthcoming album.
“Block Rockin’ Beats” went straight to No. 1 in the UK, possibly thanks, this time, to its Schoolly D vocal sample and re-working of the bass-line from 23 Skidoo’s single “Coup”.
The NME named it “Single of the Week” and said “It throbs like your head might if you had just done a length underwater in a swimming pool full of amyl.”
It later won them a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
In the US at this time, “Setting Sun” was sitting at Number 80 in the Billboard Top 100,
after selling around 80,000 copies, an uncommon achievement for a European “dance” act. Sales from Exit Planet Dust were also around 150,000.
In 1998, they concentrated more on DJing, although some remixes did see the light of day, including “I Think I’m in Love” from Spiritualized.
Both a vocal remix and an instrumental remix were included in the single release.
Each clocked in at over seven-and-a-half minutes. Another remix completed by the Brothers was “Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp” by Mercury Rev.
This was another extension in the association between the two bands, since Mercury Rev’s Jonathon Donahue contributed to “The Private Psychedelic Reel” on Dig Your Own Hole.
In June 2000, Tom and Ed played the Pyramid stage at the Glastonbury Festival. In August 2000 they played to a large crowd at the main stage at Creamfields festival, Ireland.
In December 2000, the Chemical Brothers aired one of their new tracks, “It Began in Afrika” at their New York DJ gigs, supportin
In 2001, they were quite active with releases and live performances.
Early in the year, they began working on a fourth album, provisionally titled Chemical Four.
The first track which fans got a taste of was “It Began in Afrika”, as previously played in their DJ set in New York.
The track would make its live debut in California in April 2001, at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Another new track, “Galaxy Bounce”, also got its public debut at Coachella. As had become customary for their releases and experiments,
“It Began in Afrika” was first pressed as a promo, as part of the “Electronic Battle Weapon” series. It received much airplay on dance music radio shows in the UK, and became more and more popular in clubs over the course of the summer.
It also became one of the “anthems” in Ibiza as the summer progressed.
It was given a full commercial single release in September, reaching No. 8 in the UK singles chart, even though no promotional video was made for the track.
Electronic Battle Weapons 8 & 9 were debuted on Pete Tong’s BBC Radio 1 show on 8 December 2006. The double-sided vinyl was finally released just before the Chemical Brothers’ much anticipated New Year’s Eve gig at the famous Turnmills in London.
The vinyl had a limited edition release worldwide and was received well by fans, DJs, and critics alike.
Electronic Battle Weapon 8, at about six and a half minutes, was very distinct from the “big acid” style that the earlier Battle Weapons adhered to. It was characterised by ‘thundering’ drums with a rising synth line.
A version of this track featured on the We Are the Night album and was entitled “Saturate”.
“Electronic Battle Weapon 9” was a typical Chemicals dancefloor track with their trademark vocoder vocals coupled with sirens and a basic ‘tribal’ melody.
On 30 March 2010, the band announced on their website that their seventh studio album, titled Further, would be released on 22 June and would be “the band’s first to be released with corresponding films made specifically to match each of the 8 audio tracks.”
The films were made with long-time visuals collaborators Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall. Before the release of the album,
the band played four shows in May at the London Roundhouse where they played the album and its accompanying films in their entirety. The films were released on a special edition DVD and on the iTunes LP edition.
Most reviews were positive, with BBC Music declaring that “… synths are brutally manhandled and pushed to their limits across the eight tracks”.
The Irish Times reported that “This is a very impressive collection that is carried along with a stirring sense of velocity and momentum”.
However, praise was not unanimous for the album, with the American rock magazine Spin giving it a rating of three out of five stars
In April 2015, videos containing animation and audio loops appeared on the official Chemical Brothers Facebook page and website, thechemicalbrothers.com, ahead of the imminent release of new music.
On 23 April, their new song “Sometimes I Feel so Deserted” premiered on BBC Radio 1. On 17 July, the duo released Born in the Echoes, their eighth album. Singles from this album included “Go”;
an up-beat reunion with guest vocalist Q-Tip and director Michel Gondry and “Wide Open” in collaboration with Beck.
St. Vincent, Ali Love, and Cate Le Bon also feature on the album.
Along with the new album announcement, it was revealed that Simons would
“take a break” from touring to focus on unspecified academic work. Adam Smith filled in for him on stage during the 2015 tour.
During the tour, Simons attended a few shows as an audience member, and both he and Rowlands expressed concern in interviews that this could mark a permanent retirement.
The first concert without Simons was performed at Siemens Arena in Lithuania.
Smith continued to fill in through the end of 2015, most notably at Glastonbury and the Apple Music Festival, and uniquely controlled both lights and music from the stage
On 30 March 2010, the band announced on their website that their seventh studio album, titled Further, would be released on 22 June and would be “the band’s first to be released with corresponding films made specifically to match each of the 8 audio tracks.”
The films were made with long-time visuals collaborators Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall. Before the release of the album, the band played four shows in May at the London Roundhouse where they played the album and its accompanying films in their entirety. The films were released on a special edition DVD and on the iTunes LP edition.
THETECHNOMUSIC TEAM
The first single, “Free Yourself”, was released in 28 September 2018, with “MAH” (Mad as Hell) following on 7 January 2019. Music videos were filmed for both songs.
On 1 February they released the third single, “Got to Keep On”, accompanied by a music video directed by Michel Gondry.
On 8 March, The Chemical Brothers released the fourth single, “We’ve Got to Try”, accompanied by a music video.
To support the album, the duo embarked on North American tour dates in May 2019, followed by European and Australian concerts later in 2019
On the review aggregator Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, No Geography gained an average score of 79, indicating “generally positive reviews”, based on 20 reviews.
Thomas Smith of NME said the album is “another leap forward” for the Chemical Brothers. Luke Pearson of Exclaim!, didn’t like the album’s second half, stating “even b-tier work from the Chemical Brothers is worthy of interest”
Pitchfork stated the album blended “psychedelic sensory overload with riotous club bangers” and said “the shape-shifting electronic duo’s ninth album is their most entertaining in years.”
Their name came about in 1995 after they dropped their original name of “The Dust Brothers” due to the existence of a different band with the same name.
“The Chemical Brothers” refers to the duo’s 1993 groundbreaking “Chemical Beats,” which epitomised their genre-defining sound.
In the United States the musical act have won six Grammy Awards including Best Rock Instrumental Performance, Best Dance Recording and Best Dance/Electronic Album of the year as recently as 2020.
Ed Simons was born in Herne Hill on 9 June 1970, the son of a barrister mother and a father he has described as “absent”.
His two main interests when he was young were aeroplanes and musicals. Simons attended two South London public schools, Alleyn’s School and Dulwich College.
During his school years, he developed a fondness for rare groove and hip hop music, having frequented a club called the Mud Club from the age of 14.
By the time he left school, his two main musical interests were the Manchester bands New Order and the Smiths. After finishing school with 11 O
levels and three A levels, he continued on to study history, especially late medieval history, at the University of Manchester.
Rowlands was also in a band called Ariel prior to meeting up with Simons
He formed Ariel in London with friends Brendan Melck and Mathew Berry.
Their first single was “Sea of Beats”, which was essentially a white label.
Before Philip Brown set up Echo Logik Records, their first promo was “Bokadilo”. Other songs, released on 12-in
h, included “Mustn’t Grumble” and their most well-known, “Rollercoaster”
After a year on Echo Logik they signed to the record label deConstruction.
They insisted on a female singer and they recruited former Xpansions frontwoman Sally Ann Marsh, and after some disappointing songs like “Let It Slide” (Rowlands would later describe it as “a stinker”), the band fell apart.
One of the last things Ariel did was the song “T Baby” which was remixed by the pair. In regards to the remix, Ed stated that “Ariel symbolically ended when Deconstruction asked us for a Dust Brothers remix of an Ariel track. That was the final nail in the coffin.”
In October 1994, the Dust Brothers became resident DJs at the small, but influential Heavenly
Sunday Social Club at the Albany pub in London’s Great Portland Street. Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, James Dean Bradfield, and Tim Burgess were regular visitors.
The Dust Brothers were subsequently asked to remix tracks by Manic Street Preachers and the Charlatans, plus Primal Scream’s “Jailbird” and the Prodigy’s “Voodoo People”.
These two remixes received television exposure, being playlisted by MTV Europe’s “The Party Zone” in 1995.
Early in 1994, the Dust Brothers were approached in the club one Sunday by Gallagher, from Oasis, who at the time were becoming one of the most prominent guitar bands in Britain.
Gallagher told the duo that he had a Balearic-inspired track he had written that he would like them to remix. However, over time,
Gallagher changed his mind, and in the end the Brothers did not remix it.
In July 1995, the Chemical Brothers released their debut album Exit Planet Dust (the title inspired by their name change) on Freestyle Dust/Junior Boy’s Own.
It entered the UK charts at No. 9 and featured guest vocalist Beth Orton on the song “Alive Alone”.
It eventually went on to sell over a million copies worldwide, and was used on the soundtrack of the science fiction TV series pilot Virtuality. Shortly after its release,
the Chemical Brothers signed to Virgin Records, to which they took their own offshoot label,
Freestyle Dust. For their next single, “Life Is Sweet”, released in September 1995, they again used a guest vocalist, featuring their friend Tim Burgess, singer of the Charlatans. It reached No. 25 in the UK Singles Chart.
The single was also Select magazine’s “Single of the Month” for October.
The release included a Daft Punk remix of “Life Is Sweet”.
In October 1995, the duo returned to the Heavenly Sunday Social for a second and final run of DJ dates.
They then became residents of Heavenly Social on Saturdays at Turnmills and also in Liquid Rooms in Tokyo.
In November, the Chemical Brothers played the Astoria Theatre in London. At this time the Brothers usually used a fusion of “Chemical Beats” and the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” as their encore.
During the encore, however, Keith Flint from the Prodigy jumped up on stage to dance, wearing a T-shirt sporting the slogan “Occupation: mad bastard”.
A few from the crowd subsequently joined in. This resulted in a power cable being kicked loose, bringing the show to a temporary close.
The Chemical Brothers confessed to not being too bothered; “because he’s Keith from The Prodigy, and he can do whatever the fucking hell he likes”.
Just before Christmas 1995, they played their biggest gig to date, with the Prodigy, at the Brixton Academy.
On 7 April 1997, the Chemical Brothers released their second album, Dig Your Own Hole. It was recorded at the band’s own south London studio, with the title taken from graffiti on the wall outside
The album was well received, with Mixmag rating it 10/10 and calling it “mad enough to be thrilling, slick enough for not even remotely trendy coffee tables”.
During the summer of 1997, the Brothers toured extensively, particularly in the United States. In August,
the Chemical Brothers achieved a rapprochement with the US Dust Brothers, and asked them to remix the forthcoming single “Elektrobank”.
They themselves also became highly sought-after for remixes for other artists. In September, the next single from Dig Your Own Hole, “Elektrobank” was released.
In November, the pair played at Dublin’s Point Theatre, with support from Carl Cox. They also began a US tour in Detroit.
At the end of the year, Dig Your Own Hole‘s final track, the nine-minute-long
“The Private Psychedelic Reel”, gave rise to a limited-edition mini-EP of the same name.
The B-side consisted of a live version of “Setting Sun”, recorded at the Lowlands Festival, Netherlands on 24 August 1997.
Also in December, following four sold-out US shows, the Chemical Brothers toured the UK, concluding in a sold-out show at Brixton Academy, London
Later that summer, the Brothers performed at the Woodstock ’99 concert on 24 July, with positive reception.
They later headlined the Glastonbury dance tent on the Friday night, followed by a UK tour which ended in December and included Homelands Scotland on 4 September. In November,
“Out of Control”, featuring Sumner and Gillespie on vocals, was released as a single.
The release also contained the Sasha remix. The final single from Surrender, in February 2000, was the five track “Music: Response” EP, containing the title track and two remixes, plus Electronic Battle Weapon 4, named
“Freak of the Week”, and a track called “Enjoyed”, which was essentially a remix of “Out of Control” by the Brothers themselves.
A CD copy of Surrender was placed in the third Blue Peter time capsule, buried in January 2000.
That same month, they appeared on Primal Scream’s album Xtrmntr at track 11 with a remix.
The Chemical Brothers finished work on another album, Come with Us, in October 2001.
It featured collaborations with Richard Ashcroft of the Verve (“The Test”), and long-time collaborator Beth Orton (“The State We’re In”). The album was released in January 2002, preceded by a single,
“Star Guitar”, a melodic Balearic beat number, with a promotional video by Michel Gondry that featured passing scenery synchronised to the beat viewed through a train window.
What would be the second track on the album,
“It Began in Afrika”, was released 10 September 2001 to be circulated around the clubbing scene where it was a popular hit.
“Star Guitar” was also released as a DVD single, the pair’s first. Come with Us, was less well received than their previous albums,
but nonetheless went straight to No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart in the first week of its release, selling 100,000 copies.
In April, the title track from the album was released as a single with remixes by Fatboy Slim as part of a double A-sided release with “The Test”.
At the same Turnmills gig, the Brothers also played a previously unreleased song at midnight to welcome 2007, which went down well with the crowd.
This track eventually emerged as “Burst Generator”, found on the forthcoming album We Are the Night.
Many were left wondering if the latest in the Electronic Battle Weapon series were simply one-off experiments or signalled a new direction they could take with the new album,
perhaps swaying from their genre defining big beat albums of the past. The song was also the band’s 100th released song.
On 21 March 2007, the Chemical Brothers officially announced their forthcoming album on MySpace.
The new album, entitled We Are the Night, was released on 2 July 2007 in the United Kingdom and 17 July 2007 in the United States.
The Chemical Brothers cited a delay in the production of artwork for this delay EMI subsequently released an online Chemical Brothers computer game as an apology.
The track listing was released to the fans on the official mailing list on 10 April. Collaborations featured heavily on the album, with the likes of Klaxons
(“All Rights Reversed”), Midlake (“The Pills Won’t Help You Now”), Ali Love (“Do It Again”), and Willy Mason
The duo also contributed a new version of the song “Don’t Think” titled “Nina Frequency”, as well as two new songs “Electric Hands” and “Danka Jane”, to the soundtrack of the 2010 film Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky. All three songs have not been released.
The Chemical Brothers released their first concert film, Don’t Think, in 2012, documenting their performance at Fuji Rock Festival in Japan in 2011.
The film debuted in February in theaters around the world, including a premiere in London where attendees – including Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Keira Knightley
– were seen dancing in aisles and seats, leading one reviewer to remark “at times it was impossible to tell which ‘hands in the air’ were on screen and which were in the room.”
The film was the first concert film to be mixed in 7.1 surround sound, and was released on Blu-ray, DVD, and CD on 26 March 2012.
On 7 March 2012, it was announced that the Chemical Brothers would be scoring their second movie soundtrack, for the bank heist film Now You See Me,
but the band had to pull out of the project in the early stages due to scheduling conflicts.
On 10 January 2018, the Chemical Brothers confirmed production of their ninth album, No Geography, via Instagram and other social media platforms
They released their first song in three years on 28 September 2018, titled “Free Yourself”, from the forthcoming album.
On March 7, 2019 Formula 1 announced a collaboration with the Chemical Brothers, which was released the next day in the form of the song “We’ve Got To Try”.
The Chemical Brothers’ ninth studio album, No Geography, was released on April 12, 2019 to positive reviews.
In 2020 the album won three Grammy Awards including Best Dance/Electronic Album, Best Dance Recording, and Best Music Video.
In 2019, international festival the Berlin Music Video Awards named ”We’ve Got to Try” music video as the winner of the Best Director category and also as the overall winner – Best Music Video
he Chemical Brothers’ music video for ”Eve of Destruction” obtained the second place at the Berlin Music Video Awards 2020 for Best Art Director (Ollie Tong)
