Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons met in 1989 at Manchester University and DJ’d at Naked Under Leather and Heavenly Sunday Social. They grew tired of sampling Hip-Hop instrumental tracks, and began creating their own songs using a hi-fi Hitachi system, a computer, a sampler, and a keyboard. The pair released their emphatic debut album, Exit Planet Dust, in 1995 as The Chemical Brothers (originally being known as The Dust Brothers before legal action ensued) which mixed Rave inspired House beats with punishing Hip-Hop rhythms. The following year they did the single ‘Setting Sun’ with Noel Gallagher, not long after the release of Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, giving them their first ever number one and announced their unrelenting dominance in the UK music scene. Ten albums later, seven number ones, four Grammy Awards, collaborations with a vast amount of talent (including Tim Burgess, Beth Orton, Spiritualized, New Order, Primal Scream, Richard Ashcroft, The Flaming Lips, KRS-One), helping to score films (Hanna, Black Swab, Now You See Me, The Hunger Games), as well as doing a song for the opening ceremony at the London 2012 Olympic Games – their most remarkable achievement continues to be their otherworldly live shows. Their songs seem to come alive on stage, sometimes literally when performed alongside their renowned Audio/Visual show. Whether it’s at a concert hall or on a festival stage, seeing The Chemical Brother's live is bound to amaze and live long in the memory as one of the best performances you have ever seen.

 
The Chemical Brothers music has never been held down to a specific sound. It has crossed many boundaries of electronic music – Big Beat, Electronica, House, experimental, Trip-Hop, to name a few – making music that is just as suitable in an underground music scene as it is on radio pop charts. With their newest album Born In The Echoes, again it doesn’t conform, taking an almost psychedelic posture throughout. There are radio friendly tracks which are great in their own right but for the most of it the listener is taken through a juddering gauntlet of brain-altering electronica.
 
The album starts with ‘Sometimes I Feel So Deserted’. An electronic trickling sound of a bomb being dropped is met by the sounds of alarms which create a base to this industrial beat. With the lyrics ensuing, everything gets lost in an electronic sweep before the bass explodes and you are hit with what every Chemical Brothers fan has been longing for since the release of their last album five years ago. Reminiscent of ‘Galvanize’ (off the 2005 Push The Button album), Q-Tip exerts his stupendous flow on one of the pop standout tracks on the album. Its memorable lyrics and catchy rhythm would have the world dancing, and I’m sure it will go down as one of their many classics. ‘Under Neon Lights’ features The Chemical Brothers weird but tasteful beats, with St Vincent doing her best job at a Blondie-esque ‘Rapture’ impersonation, before you get the first glimpse of what great things Tom and Ed have been getting up to with the track ‘EML Ritual’. A truly fantastic song that has a menacing nightmarish beat, which match Ali Love’s lyrics “I don’t know what to do / I’m gonna lose my mind”, and sucks you into its mutating hypnotic trance which plays with what you are expecting. ‘I’ll See You There’ crashes through the silence left by the sharp finish of its predecessor, with frantic drums creating another trippy pastiche of The Beatles ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ – "The future? I’ll see you there!", maybe a note on how the two pioneers are still on the top of their game.
 
After the big dancefloor vibes of ‘Just Bang’, ‘Reflexion’ comes in as if the night has just hit it’s high point. The climactic track gets its euphoric feel from saxophonist Colin Stetson, whose sound may not be immediately apparent as it is coated in lots of effects, but its effect is certainly cardinal and makes it my favourite track on the album. The sci-fi swamp beat to ‘Taste Of Honey’ is like an intense fever dream. It’s downbeat jungle rhythm drags the listener through vivid hallucinations of buzzing insects and tribal rituals. Staying on an unsettling vibe, the title track takes a tour through a post-punk landscape guided by the voice of Cate Le Bon until you hit the start of the albums closing coda with the soft affirming sounds of ‘Radiate’. You are brought back down to earth after this fifty three minute voyage through The Chemical Brothers experience with Beck's humanistic clear vocals in ‘Wide Open’ – a complete way to finish.
 
This is by no means an album just to boost the sales of their phenomenal back catalogue. Like on their past albums, Tom and Ed have continued to push boundaries to find what more they can get out of their Chemical Brothers sound. It is just as exciting and interesting, fresh and memorable as any previous album. The mixing, balance and construction of each different component in every track is impeccable, toying with their past sounds which almost dance around in front of your speakers as you listen. The Chemical Brothers have been ambassadors of the electronic genre for the past two decades and they show no sign of letting us down.
Iain Lauder