The Chemical Brothers
- Exit Planet Dust [Astralwerks, 1995] A-
- Loops of Fury EP [Astralwerks, 1996] *
- Dig Your Own Hole [Astralwerks, 1997] A-
- Surrender [Astralwerks, 1999] *
- Music: Response [Astralwerks, 2000]
- Push the Button [Astralwerks, 2005] A-
Consumer Guide Reviews:
Exit Planet Dust [Astralwerks, 1995]They won't convert you because their main interest is pleasing you--pleasing anybody who's both open-minded enough to conceive techno as a bright sun in the rock cosmos and well-adjusted enough not to start star wars over it. Starts out whomping irrepressibly, ends up schlocking imperturbably, and either way provides the noise, beats, and basslines us earthlings like in our electrically enhanced popular music. Means nothing--except that pleasure is a function of somatic and cultural givens less malleable than mutants have always claimed. A-
Loops of Fury EP [Astralwerks, 1996]
"a little early but thanks anyway" (I think) ("Get Up on It Like This") *
Dig Your Own Hole [Astralwerks, 1997]
Their secret isn't technowizardry, formal daring, or Lord help us eclecticism. As with so many pop wunderkinds, it's spirit--generous, jubilant, unfazed by industrial doom, in love with energy and sound. Noel Gallagher only wishes he had their heart; they say more with a borrowed catch-phrase--"Who is this doin' this type of alphabetapsychedelic funkin'?"--than he can with a whole album of verse-chorus-verse. Of course it matters that they're not retro. But it matters even more that their futurism is neither exclusionary nor puritanical. A-
Surrender [Astralwerks, 1999]
nostalgic--for futurism past, yet--at, what, 29? ("Hey Boy Hey Girl," "Let Forever Be") *
Music: Response [Astralwerks, 2000]
Push the Button [Astralwerks, 2005]
Their genre incontrovertibly passé, they can put futurist games behind them. So, free to do their thing without looking over their shoulders, they turn in their best album since 1996 even though some schmuck from the Charlatans ruins track two. "Believe" and "The Big Jump" rock the block. The Arabian strings of "Galvanize" are augmented-not-improved by the tyrant-bashing rhetoric of "Left Right." And the three abstractions that complete the project clatter, tweetle, shudder, chime, whoosh, and phase. A-