By Michael Dwyer
The Chemical Brothers, Ed Simons (left) and Tom Rowlands are releasing their tenth album.
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If Doctor Who ever regenerates as a DJ, his TARDIS stands ready somewhere in the south of England. The precise location of Rowlands Audio Research, the Chemical Brothers’ retro-futuristic music facility, is top secret. But the photos in their forthcoming book, Paused In Cosmic Reflection, depict an electro-playground from another dimension.
Wall-to-wall silver knobs and plug holes, cascading cables of many colours, towering banks of keyboards, guitars and machines with glinting meter windows await the twiddle of fingers and wiggle of waveforms.
In their midst this early morning sits Tom Rowlands. His partner Ed Simons is “on leave”. But machines don’t do holidays. “It’s how most days start for me,” he says. “Today it’s just an hour and a half earlier than usual.”
This is because the band is announcing two things: A brand new album, For That Beautiful Feeling, their tenth, and an Australian tour next February and March in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. But let’s stay here at the source for a moment.
The Chemical Brothers will perform live in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.Credit: Luke Dyson
This is “where everything has been made since 2003,” Rowlands says. “I think it would qualify for one of those hoarder TV programs. I’ve still got keyboards that I used when I was 16… I always feel like, ‘oh, maybe that will be the thing that will unlock this idea…’
“There are lots of rare and strange instruments in here. It’s a lifetime of collecting things and being intrigued about making sounds and processes. Every day is spent experimenting with that, really.”
Innovation was easier, he concedes, back in the Dust Brothers days. That was the name he and Simons borrowed from a pair of LA hip-hop producers they never thought they’d meet, much less eclipse as they rose from Manchester club DJs to heroes of the ’90s dance music revolution.
“In the studio, in the act of creation, you’re trying not to think about music you’ve made before,” Rowlands says. “That’s one of the things we’ve tried to ban in the last ten years. You’re never allowed to say, ‘Oh, well, it sounds a bit like thingy,’ or ‘That idea worked better when we did it in 1993…’
“Both of us feel that we’ve come this far so we only want to put out records that we feel connected to, and that we love, but also not to feel impaired by the weight of what we’ve made. Music is fun… it’s a positive thing.”
For That Beautiful Feeling, as a title, glows with reaffirmation. Rowland and Simons didn’t know each other growing up in Greater London, but as students in Manchester they bonded over a shared feelgood backstory. For a moment there, the raves they’d experienced as teens felt like a transformation of society itself.
“If you were a fan of indie music in the ’80s, as I was, like The Smiths and the Jesus and Mary Chain or whatever, and then suddenly in 1988 you got out of your long black coat and turned up to an event wearing a dayglo t-shirt and purple tracky bottoms and a bandana then yeah, something had shifted here,” he says.
“In the rave scene there was a generosity of spirit. I don’t know if egalitarian is the right word, but it was about the democracy of the dance floor; that moment of community… Those early experiences of going to those raves and hearing really wild, odd music playing to 20,000 people in a field, there’s enough latent energy in that experience to power the reactor for many years.”
It’s 28 years since the first Chemical Brothers album, Exit Planet Dust: an immediate classic that would light a fire under Fatboy Slim and Daft Punk and countless others emerging with the suddenly accelerating genre.
From the outset, the Chemical Brothers had a winning distinction that straddled the perceived dance/ rock divide. Singers. Beth Orton and the Charlatans’ Tim Burgess on that first album. Noel Gallagher featured on their second, Dig Your Own Hole.
For That Beautiful Feeling finds the cross-pollination thriving. Beck returns for his second Chemical Brothers collaboration, Skipping Like A Stone. A new French singer, Halo Maud, features on several tracks including the exhilarating single, Live Again.
Whether looping in Mazzy Star, Primal Scream, New Order, Mercury Rev or myriad ‘found’ voices, the emphasis is on song-like structures: not always a given in club music. Outsourcing personalities also has the advantage of leaving Rowlands and Simons as silhouettes in the blinding lights of their escalating live shows.
“We’ve sidestepped the cult of personality,” Rowlands says. “We’ve never been those kinda people and because of that we’ve avoided a lot of doing press and stuff. That’s not our strongest point. Growing up with bands like New Order, they all seemed quite mysterious. It was good that you didn’t know much about them. The music is more
interesting than we are.”
It’s a feeling, not a haircut, that the Chemical Brothers and their fans are chasing; “that kind of transformative immediacy,” Rowlands says, striving for the words. “The thing that holds all these ideas together is that, for me.
“That beautiful feeling isn’t just constrained to something outwardly pretty or melodic or harmonious. It can be that horrible white noise mess that’s out of control. That’s also an overwhelming feeling.
“It’s always that first moment of creation in the studio, of finding this new combination of sounds or emotions or something. Then the next phase is when you actually play it to people, live, and you build that kind of environment… to maximum effect.”
The duo’s legendary light and video spectaculars have been designed since ’94 by filmmaker Adam Smith (whose resume, incidentally, includes several episodes of Doctor Who). Rowlands won’t be drawn on next year’s doubtless retina-scorching update, except to say, “every time we do it, we want it bigger.
“Maybe one time we’ll answer, like, ‘No, we’ve decided just to come back with a light bulb and a drum machine’, but not quite yet… I mean, we’re not gonna take the easy way of telling you to put your hands in the air. We’re just gonna try to suggest it through all means necessary.”
For That Beautiful Feeling is out on September 8. Paused in Cosmic Reflection is out October 26. The Chemical brothers will play at Riverstage, Brisbane, on February 27, at Sydney Showground on February 29 and at Mt Duneed Estate, Geelong, on March 2. Presales start Wednesday, September 6 at 2pm.
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