THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS - ‘FURTHER’
Published: Music Australia Guide #77, June 2010.
The Chemical Brothers
Further
****
(Freestyle Dust/EMI)
The ‘00s was a decade of diminishing prolificacy and, many might suggest, quality for the pair once known as the UK’s premier electronic duo. Where the mid and late ‘90s saw Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands (aka The Chemical Brothers) release a record almost every year – classic debut Exit Planet Dust (1995) and electronic landmark Dig Your Own Hole (1997) included – the last 10 years has witnessed a comparatively meagre return three reasonable, but none too convincing records. The Chemical Brothers’ star, it seemed, was on the wane. Seventh studio album Further definitely arrests the slide. There’s plenty of vintage Chemical Brothers here. Colossal synth shards puncture the cosmic atmospheres of Escape Velocity, peaking into the record’s first, foot-to-the-floor dance rhythm, while Dissolve tears along in classic Chemical fashion, with ‘70s psyche guitar lines and rattling, gun-barrel drum breaks moulding a kind of loose, expanded take on rock. It’s electrifying (if hardly surprising) stuff. The real charms are in Rowlands’ and Simons’ gestures toward early house music and attention to melodic, textural and analogue production detail. Indeed, subtleties reward on this extended, eight-track record. The sweet pop overture of Another World is consumed in droning synth slabs and phases before modulating into a dense, blocky, house rhythm, while Swoon makes for a wondrous moment of disco-flecked euphoria. Though hardly a reinvention, what Further does so well is extend and sophisticate The Chemical Brothers’ sound. As it’s title suggests, this record broadens Simons’ and Rowlands’ scope.
DAN RULE
