Chemical Brothers s/d

Search:Most of Surrender (excluding annoying Johnathan Donohue collaboration, Most of Exit Planet Dust. The Beth Orton song on Dig Your Own Hole.

Destroy:About half of Dig Your Own Hole which I used to like but sounds pretty dated now.

_Exit Planet Dust_ is a good album, but _Dig Your Own Hole_ is fantastic. Anything with "Block Rockin' Beats", "Electrobank", "It Doesn't Matter", "Setting Sun", "Where Do I Begin?", and "The Private Psychedelic Reel" on it is a must. _Come With Us_ certainly seems like a return to form; "Star Guitar" is the best single they've released since "Hey Boy Hey Girl".

Destroy - It began in Afrika , Not Another Drugstore , My Mercury Mouth , Her Jazz.

beautiful.

DESTROY EVERYTHING ELSE.

Otherwise, search:

"Block Rockin' Beats" as performed live; "Life Is Sweet"; "One Too Many Mornings"; "Alive, Alone"; "Orange Wedge"; "Hey Boy, Hey Girl"; "Got Glint?"; all of Dig Your Own Hole.

I must hear this song, clearly.

Destroy: Block Rockin Beats

I'd have to say that the reason that most people don't really like the new stuff is that since DYOH and maybe before, people have been expecting "Big Beat" but the chems have been steadily doing more.. dare I say trancey stuff. I couldn't really care less. They've usually had around one song on each album that I wasn't too interested in, with the exception of "Exit". on DYOH it was Block Rockin, On Surrender it was Orange Wedge. Realistically The Chems aren't very US dancefloor. But they are inspiring. to cut the babbling I think that thier remix work is often some of thier best.

They could have ended up like Fatboy Slim. It makes me cry to listen to "Halfway between the blah blah blah" knowing that "Better Living Through Chemistry" was so good. I thought anyway. Halfway between was so overproduced and fiddly. It sounded like he was trying to cram in as many hooks as humanly possible into songs liks "Ya Mama". And it just didn't work.

But I _wanted_ an album full of stuff like "Hey Boy Hey Girl"! I thought that was their new direction and, when I heard nonsense like "Music: Response" and "Let Forever Be" coming out of my speakers when I played the album, I got deeply annoyed.

Destroy: Afrika, obviously. You can see what they're trying to do - house music has been itching for a Kings Of The Wild Frontier influence for a while now - but it doesn't quite come off. <gervais>Shame.</gervais>

This just in:

Following their fifth consecutive number 1 album last year, the Grammy award winning ‘We Are The Night’, The Chemical Brothers return with ‘Brotherhood’ a best of collection with a kick and a twist, set for release on 1st September 2008.

In a career that to date has spanned 13 years and accrued 9 million record sales Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have established themselves as true pioneers of electronic music and as The Chemical Brothers they have become one of the most popular dance acts of all time. Now seems the perfect time to take stock of their seminal output with the double disc celebration that is Brotherhood.

Brotherhood comprises of 2 discs, the first is a collection of 14 undeniable benchmark Singles from the bands immense back catalogue and new track ‘Keep My Composure’ which features the shimmering flow of Baltimore’s Spank Rock.

The 2nd will feature exclusively Electronic Battle Weapons 1-10. Since 1996 Electronic Battle Weapons have acted as the laboratories for The Chems devious musical experiments and laid the rhythmic and melodic foundations for numerous tracks as well as providing some of the duos most formidable mixes. Until now Electronic Battle Weapons1-9 have only been available on various limited formats and this is the first time they have been widely available.

Brotherhood will be preceded by the digital download single Midnight Madness. Derived and developed from Electronic Battle Weapons 10 Midnight Madness is The Chemical Brothers at there most infectious, euphoric, report to the dancefloor best.

Midnight Madness is released on the 18th August.
Brotherhood is released on 1st September both on Freestyle Dust/Virgin Records

TRACKLISTING

DISC 1

1. Galvanize
2. Hey Boy Hey Girl
3. Block Rockin’ Beats
4. Do It Again
5. Believe
6. Star Guitar
7. Let Forever Be
8. Leave Home
9. Keep My Composure
10. Saturate
11. Out Of Control
12. Midnight Madness
13. The Golden Path
14. Setting Sun
15. Chemical Beats

DISC 2
1-10 Electronic Battle Weapons

compare with the last best-of, which came out in 2004:

1. Song To The Siren
2. Chemical Beats
3. Leave Home
4. Setting Sun
5. Block Rockin' Beats
6. Private Psychedelic Reel
7. Hey Boy Hey Girl
8. Let Forever Be
9. Out Of Control
10. Star Guitar
11. Test
12. Get Yourself High - Chemical Brothers & K-Os
13. Golden Path - Chemical Brothers & The Flaming Lips

EBWs
It Doesn't Matter
Don't Stop The Rock
Under The Influence
Freak Of The Week
It Began In Afrika
Hoops
Galvanize
Saturate
ebw9 = ?
ebw10 = ?

According to the press release, ebw10 = Midnight Madness.

#7 was Acid Children, not Gavanise

press release sez Midnight Madness is not #10 but is based on it

(and EBW6 was a remix after the fact, not a trial early version like most of the others)

i heard EBW6 way before Hoops. got info re 7 from discogs tho.

"shimmering flow of Baltimore’s Spank Rock."

Shimmering?

babbling brook more like

.

other than the limited teaser extra cd, i just dont see who this is aimed at.
surely, any casual fans already have the current 'best of' collection, especially seeing as the cd is stocked at bargain basement prices.
truly baffling.

yeah, in Australia the current in-print version is the best-of, the bonus disc from the first release, AND the DVD best-of, all in a three-part gatefold DVD-sized box... in a slipcase... for under twenty bucks.

end of contract I guess?

are the EBWs diff't versions of these tracks??

they tended to be dancier mixes of what you'd later hear on the albums

new single was on C4 last night. it's pretty dire imo - sounds like what some euro trance-lite dude would come up with.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xcHF_RhSW-0

on one

another related memory is that when the college station that I have DJd on since 1998 first got their license in '93 or '94, we would listen to the station back then at the bakery I worked at (I did radio then, but on a different station) and they played "Setting Sun" like 10 times a day

I actually do like "Let Forever Be". I think it wouldn't have been so much of an issue if they hadn't opted to work with Noel again.

Arguably the "working with male rock singers" gambit was almost a straight line of diminishing returns: "Life Is Sweet" = "Setting Sun" > "Let Forever Be" > "The Acid Test" > "The Golden Path".

If you played those in succession there would be a clear encroaching vibe I would compare to regulatory capture: the CBs gradually forgetting that the point was to take the rock-association and forge something new with it, rather than just come up with an arrangement that would complement the peccadillos of the guest vocalist.

otm imo

One thing about Let Forever Be is it does not buzzsaw through your skull the way Setting Sun does. It’s also a way more overt Tomorrow Never Knows rip

The line “how does it feel like?” bothers the shit out of me though

Fwiw I really like “The Acid Test”. “Golden Path” sucks though.

you mean The Test, right? or is there another track called The Acid Test?

ok so I never actually bought a copy of Come With Us, I downloaded it way back when MP3s were always mistagged so I assumed that was just the actual name of the song

Yeah I just mean "The Test" - when I think of the song all I can hear in my head is Richard Ashcroft asking "did I pass the acid test?", and it's up there with "how does it feel like?" as one of the more annoying questions asked in modern music.

otm, I like The Test apart from that so if is a bummer

all the lyrics in that song are annoying but the pure beauty of the "are you feeling me like I'm feeling you" part makes up for it

interesting to compare all these to Out of Control which seems to be the opposite, the boys just enjoying themselves

You know what other song sounds like the boys just enjoying themselves, is "The Salmon Dance"

lol

The Salmon Dance sounds like the boys trying to write Gorillaz song. Possibly even a Plastic Beach song, 3 years before that album even came out.

Salmon Dance is fun I just wish the album it was on was better

That album is good, though. “We Are The Night” and “Battle Scars” are fantastic and I am not part of the posse that dislikes “The Salmon Dance”

Not as good as their last one but new album is still pretty good. Wasn't sure about some of the singles but they work really well in the context of the album.

This is about more than just the Chemical Brothers but I didn't know which thread would be best

https://musictech.com/news/industry/the-chemical-brothers-touring-us-not-viable/

I noticed Geoff Barrow (the Portishead guy) say this on social media:

I can’t stand the chemical brothers never have
Awful music for dullards

Cool guy!

only single I've heard is "Live Again" which has one of the coolest guitar sounds I've ever heard

wanna grab it on vinyl but man it's so expensive

Geoff being a silly billy yet again

Not as good as their last one but new album is still pretty good.

Yeah, it didn't grab me right away like the last one did, and it seems to have fallen into a crack in the earth as far as press coverage. I'll give it another listen this week, though.

It's a good album but... maybe my least favourite. Too early to tell.

the-chemical-brothers-touring-us-not-viable/

huge thanks to Tom & Ed for playing Seattle in between the two weekends of Coachella this year

Not that surprising. It's not like they're jusrlt taking a drumkit and some guitars and synths with them. Their current live set up includes two 30ft tall robots that shoot lasers from their eyes ffs

The other pre-album singles did nothing for me but Live Again might be my favourite thing I've ever heard them do

Listening to the new one right now, I get what folks are saying about it — it’s consistent, solid, and enjoyable, just doesn’t blow minds or anything.

On a sidenote, it’s startling to look at the overall discography and realize how much music these guys put out in the 21st century that I’ve just … totally missed those album cycles somehow

(The new record reminds me, in some ways, of buying a Crystal Method album in like 2004 - it was fine, or a little better than fine, you know?)

boxedjoy otm

Live Again is pure gold, who knew all I wanted from life was a My Bloody Valentine / Todd Edwards mashup

New album is nice on first listen, but maybe like a slightly less thumping retread of the last one?

not heard the new one yet but this made me smile

We used to get quite tongue-tied around him (Weatherall). I remember being in a nightclub asking him what synths he’d bought. He said: “I’m waiting for the Chekhov Warp.” Which I took to mean a new synth we hadn’t heard of. A couple of weeks later I realised he meant he was waiting for the “cheque off Warp” records to buy new equipment, so when we remixed Saint Etienne’s Like a Motorway we called it the Chekhov Warp mix.

lol, that's fantastic.

Sick remix too - and new to me!

the more you hear re weatherall, the more you love him.

my YouTube algorithm has been playing a bunch of Chemical Brothers videos lately which rules. so many of these I haven't seen in years. I remember seeing "Get Yourself High" on MTV and being all OH MY GOD HOW DID THEY DO THIS

lol haven't seen that before, pretty good. any other recs?

"Let Forever Be" is the one directed by Gondry and is probably one of my favorite music videos ever. Mostly for personal reasons. I just turned 13 and was way into the Chemical Bros, so I'd flip on MTV every day after school trying to catch the video. I had no idea what it sounded like. One day I finally caught it and not only was the song great but the video was freaky as hell, unlike anything I'd seen before. I remember really struggling to describe it to a friend. Sadly it never came on again. You can see it now on YouTube, of course.

imo the brilliance of it is that they actually made the woman do each sequence 7 times, each time slightly different (maybe not on purpose), so its kind of out of sync like a high school musical. I'm sure this was how Gondry wanted it of course.

fwiw all their videos are great, they're all pretty elaborate and most of them are funny. shout out to "Star Guitar" though, I was like a minute in before realizing it was actually perfectly synced to the music, again I'm not sure how they pulled this off in 2002

Oh yeah i know those (and they're awesome), I should have specified deeper cuts! I'll just have a trawl. I don't know how star guitar was done either, get yourself high is also very impressive for its era.

I became a major fan in '06 so the first video I really got to enjoy being released was "Do It Again", which was on MTV Dance and similar channels every hour or so, and I liked that the motivation behind it was seemingly nothing except to redo "Ya Mama" with a happier ending

In the unlikely event I get asked to do ‘My Cultural Life’, I’d pick Chemical Brothers videos. Just perfect synthesis of music, visuals and dance.

"Let Forever Be" is the one directed by Gondry

Gondry did at least four, including Star Guitar! Most of their videos in the last 20 years have either been by Adam Smith (their live visuals guy, who even took over onstage when Ed went back to uni) with Marcus Lyall, or Dom & Nic, who’ve also been working with them since the 90s

well that one's the most Gondry of the Gondries

lol haven't seen that before, pretty good. any other recs?

Wide Open live is something else:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYqyaHxdgW4

their stage show looks incredibly sick, now that I've seen Underworld they might be the act I wanna see most

It is. Saw them at Leeds and there’s a bit in MAH where the mad as hell dude works himself into a frenzy and fires lasers into the crowd. So exciting I nearly peed myself!

Not sure if it counts as a deep cut, but 'Wide Open' is great

doesn't quite have the gondry magic but cool idea & very well done.

Tomora tell us about the world of ‘Come Closer’: “The album is about the search for some connection”
Watch Aurora and The Chemical Brothers' Tom Rowlands talk to NME about what brought them together, humanity, activism, and dealing in the "exceptional" to create "a mix of escapism and confrontation" on their debut album
https://www.nme.com/features/music-interviews/tomora-aurora-chemical-brothers-tom-rowlands-interview-come-closer-coachella-live-3927696

Tomora release ‘Come Closer’ on April 17 via Fontana

fun interview, had no idea this was happening, sounds like it'll be a blast. after No Geography I kinda wondered if they'd go ahead and make her a full time member...her influence on that album seems to go a lot further than the other guest stars they've had