The Chemical Brothers & Come With Us
Author: Jonty Adderley
Friday, January 11, 2002
When Virgin's Encyclopedia of 90s Music was published in 1999 the book referred to the duo's "trademark sound of guitars, heavy breakbeats and analogue noise", and it's this particular recipe that remains their basic stock-in-trade, whether on 1996's Grammy winning number 1 Block Rockin' Beats or brand new single Star Guitar. Astute selection of collaborators has also always been a consistent ingredient, which they've retained for new album Come With Me, recruiting regular singer Beth Orton and Verve mainman Richard Ashcroft.
Perhaps their only serious remaining rival for biggest-dance-band-in-the-world, is the Prodigy, though while the Prodigy reportedly continue to flirt with heavy rock, The Chemicals heart has always stayed firmly within clubland. And for new album Come With Us, recently described by Mix Mag as a proper "back to the dance-floor record", it's clubland where their hearts clearly still remain.
Skrufff's Jonty Adderley met both Tom and Ed before Christmas at Virgin's West London headquarters just weeks after they'd finished the final mix of the album. Friendly, chatty, articulate and cheerful, both exhibited near telepathic understanding of each other's thoughts, coming across as two great mates of single-minded vision. And it's a vision that's likely to take them far (again), judging by the reaction that's already been prompted by limited edition white labels of the new record.
Skrufff: Did you have a clear idea of the new album when you sat down to start it-
Ed: "We started it just thinking that we wanted to do another record, and we were quite keen, fired up and enthusiastic after spending a long time away from the studio. Not out of habit, rather we just wanted to get back in the studio after two years of touring. We didn't have a particular initial view of how it would sound at the end. It's wrong to see it as being more dance floor orientated than Surrender, though. There were tracks on Surrender that were killer on the dance floor in the same way that there are some on this one and also on Exit Planet Dust and Dig Your Own Hole. It's always been one of the most exciting things for us to have records that we can play as DJs. I don't think the dance floor's informed it more but while we were making it, we kept relevant by DJing."
Skrufff: Do you usually start each album from a blank canvas-
Tom: "That's always the way we work, because we can only really write and record when we have our studio set up. We're not laptop people, we like having our old synths. When we're on tour we just concentrate on being on tour and adding things to the show as we're doing then. Everything's focused on the music we're playing every night. When you come off tour, it's like that cycle thing of "Now it's time for making music". Usually we've been inspired from seeing how our music works in front of people."
Skrufff: How easy has this album been compared to the others, do they get any easier with experience-
Tom: "I think they're getting harder to make, personally, because of the amount of music we've already made. We're always searching for new sounds and new ways of doing things and it's not like we're personal songwriters. What fires some people's albums are personal experiences and relaying those experiences but it doesn't really work like that for us. For us, making songs and producing records is about how the sound affects you and the emotions that can create. It's more difficult to find things that inspire us these days than it was befor Tags