Chemical Brothers - Further (June 2010)

http://www.thechemicalbrothers.com/#/news/article/92/further

With a video for each track.

TS: snatches of vocals vs vocals of snatches

Escape Velocity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2kIAV6ScUw

^ probably not the official video although it would be funny if they put that on the DVD

I guess it's more of the same, which is fine for me. I've liked largely everything they do, and actually think their past 2-3 albums have been better than "Dig Your Own Hole", which was one albums where I didn't like the drumbeats or drumsounds at all.

boards of canada > chemical bros

I would've said the same in 2002, but these days...

I have hope.

The last album was just about the worst thing of all time.

album cuva
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yF6658ixL._SL500_AA600_.jpg

preview of first single
http://www.amazon.com/Swoon/dp/B003J5UZEE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1273008121&sr=8-2

i'm pretty sure i'm going to like this album a lot.

Huh? I thought the album was supposed to be all instrumental, but I guess they have to have some kind of vocal on a single.

blatant Orbital nod there

yay!
http://soundcloud.com/oedipus/the-chemical-brothers

so... this leaked. and it's really good.

seriously. this is great.

Yes, yes it is. I'm loving it more and more. The lack of stunt-vocalists is welcome.

Yeah they've really been ploughing the same furrow over and over again and the last album was woeful, but this one sounded terrific live, and no half-arsed guest vocalists is a massive bonus.

They used to be great at using guest vocalists but they got to a point where the album highlights were almost all instrumentals, eg Saturate, Burst Generator, Denmark, The Big Jump, while the vocal ones ranged from ho-hum to embarrassing. This is the best possible move they could have made.

When is this out properly again? The 12th?

There's something that has always hindered me really enjoying this band. Can't put my finger on it. Same as Basement Jaxx I suppose.

too house

Cover connection:

http://www.tex0gen.com/images/pendulum-immersion-album-art1.jpg

They do like their cover connections, the Chems.

Fuck me that's an awful cover.

yeah, you say too house* steve, but they're not THAT house compared to some acts of the same spawn i really like (Daft Punk etc) - I hear them as breaks-lite or whatever extension of Big Beat manages to thrive these days.

*besides I like to think i have time for lots of house these days.

Just always seemed a bit flimsy though, which is normally my complaint when it comes to house and dance i don't like in general. I had the first album and it was okay. Dig Your Own Hole was better and I really really liked Elektrobank which I felt was highly underrated. Setting Sun really put me off them for a while and then I enjoyed Star Guitar (but not loads - more for the video).

i really like (Daft Punk etc)

didn't you used to hate Homework tho?

flimsy is the last thing the Chems were unless you mean some of their non-dance stuff...at least until crap like Midnight Madness and Das Spiegel.

I really think Homework is overrated, myself. And am tempted to say that Human After All is their best album (hard to compare it to Discovery, they are such different beasts, but I know which album I play more! just saying...).

Homework I can take or leave. Still reckon the whole thing needs speeding up +1 or +2, but that's hors sujet.

I don't know much about the recent stuff, but I always associated Chems with being too keen to get indie-boppers (to revive a term) on the dancefloor. It's the same as the Prodigy going "punk" and Pendulum going emo etc. You have a perfectly accomplished left-commercial dance act that happens to appeal to rock as well as dance fans and then you make the mistake of pandering increasingly to the former camp, which doesn't work very well.

Really enjoying this on first listen, I think they've been listening to 'Carousel' by Koenig Cylinders a fair bit. 'Horse Power' is fantastic.

Horsepower is such a hilariously banging TOON! I love it.

Flimsy isn't a word I'd use to describe the Chems. If anything's wrong with them (above and beyond all the awful indie team-ups), they're too bombastic. I.e. making the drums sound on record like they do when you're off your noggin in an air hanger at 2am. Like, what's flimsy about obsessing over the beat from When The Levee Breaks?

That said, I'd still find it hard to POX. It would be more like POXX.

Also live, they've gone through something of a rebirth over the last four years. Everytime I see them now they're astounding. I really like Escape Velocity as well which has quite blatantly been built round a sample from Baba O'Reilly by The Who until it was time for clearance and they've had to have someone play it on a synth instead.

my concern with them has always been that they're too obvious, not sophisticated enough, always fall back on stock tropes. but then I really enjoy about half of each of their albums (except Come With Us which is obviously shit)

The one either after or before that is shit as well. (Or possibly the one either side.)

They were great DJs. I can't stress how much fun Naked Under Leather and the few times I caught them at the Heavenly Social at the Albany and at Turnmills were.

The last album was the worst, bar one or two amazing tracks. The Salmon Dance ffs.

Something about Another World really reminds me of Paris by Friendly Fires, both the chords and the huge warm fuzzy synth glow. Sounds like they're trying to split the difference between the original and the Aeroplane/Au Revoir Simone remix.

first thing Another World reminds me of is Passion Pit's The Reeling

this is all pretty good but the opening track really stands out for me

found this pretty boring on first listen. cutdown on guest vox/worthy songs good but there's something else missing here. certainly no better than the last SMD LP or even the new Groove Armada one.

I guess what separates this from earlier Chemicals albums is that there are no guest acts. I have kinda liked those appearances on earlier albums, but if guest acts means Q-Tip and Klaxons, then I don't miss them at all.

It needs slightly stronger beats + a bit more variety I think but I'm still enjoying it, but Horse Power makes me wish the album would peak a bit more.

Ah, it's on Spotify. Excellent. Try before you buy is always good so I can decide if this is a return to form or old codswaloop.

It's nice, it's certainly the best one since Surrender. But Escape Velocity is still the best track on it by several million light years.

However, it's *really* bugging me what it reminds me of. (And no, not Baba O'Riley - don't want to get bogged down in whether that sound is a sample or a marimba repeat on an organ or a sequenced synth, but that's not the bit I'm talking about.) There's something about the way it starts and builds up, and then goes through this bit where it... shifts... kind of like it's tilting, as if there's a weird delay that suddenly goes wonky, or a kind of phased effect. It's really really reminding me of something but I can't quite remember what. The effect is that of when you're looking at a planetarium and the whole sky tilts slightly, when they're moving the overhead projections to show the procession of the equinoxes (or whatever that's called when they spin the sky around in a planetarium.)

(I have a funny feeling it might be something in early Spiritualized - watch it be a Chemical Brothers remix of Spz.)

In fact, that's exactly what it is (albeit minus the remix bit) - the transition from Born Never Asked to Electric Mainline on Pure Phase. It's got that same sense of whooooooosh like I can't help but lean back in my chair expecting the acceleration to kick in when it happens.

(If anything, the breakdowns on Dissolve sounds WAY more like The Who than Escape Velocity. Which London DJ was it used to interrupt his sets to play Who songs in their entirety, or was that a Oizo trick?)

At the Roundhouse show, there were moments during Escape Velocity which reminded me of MBV in the middle of You Made Me Realise - not quite as intense, but similarly disorientating, like the whole track was about to collapse into sheer noise before the kickdrum could come back in. It felt like if you stopped dancing then you might fall over - exactly that tilting sensation that Masonic Boom describes. It reminded me of movies where a spaceship is reentering earth's orbit and the whole craft is shuddering and bits of the outer casing are peeling off in flames.

now that ^^^ has me wanting to listen to the chems again

Doesn't quite have that effect on record sadly.

It does make you lean back in your chair slightly, though. Especially if you listen on headphones really loudly.

ACtually the MBV comparisons might not be that off - just noticed the little female vocal on Swoon that comes in and goes "oo-ooh oo-ooh oo-ooh" in a totally MBV stylee.

This is what Escape Velocity really remind me of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tbHDkYRSoY

Koenig Cylinders track is better obv. I saw Tom and Ed play it during a DJ set at Glastonbury in 2005 so it's very probably a direct influence.

OMG I think you have BROKEN me with that track. What on earth is it? I think I love it and want to marry it.

Ne'er mind, I have found it. You have just made me the happiest person in the universe, that is the most spacerock thing I've ever heard in my life, it sounds like the inside of my head during a manic episode, christ, that's amazing.

Thanks for the Koenig Cylinders link Matt. What a find.

I've listened to the first track on this! It's great! Need to actually get time to listen to the whole thing.

^^^^^^

Too bad the album's not discounted anyplace. I could get the fuckin' Eminem, Kele or Sia album for $8.99-9.99 but I've gotta shell out $14.99 for this one? Yikes, c'mon... throw a bone out to the fans. CDs need to be *CHEAP* to sell!

It's totally weak ass indie shoegaze bullshit, but that happens to be a type of music I really, really, like so I don't care.

It's annoying because I'm that big a fan of the first track, but it does tend to stick in my head for hours afterwards. I usually just skip it because I want to get to Escape Velocity. If it were the gentle closer, the last track on the album I might appreciate it more. I just know there's such treasures behind that weak ass indie shoegaze.

HI DERE that is probably quite close to my own thought...and Kate I take the first two as a unit, really - they stand out from the rest IMO although the quality level is consistently pretty high throughout

also Snow keeps getting stuck in my head as well - I find myself mumbling its idiotically simple refrain now and then

It just turns into the actual Jackie Wilson song, though, in my head.

For me, the album doesn't peak until Swoon kicks in - now that is some KICK ASS indie shoegazey shit. Dissolve - Horsepower - Swoon is my triple punch of power (Bronte-saurus!)

I gotta stop listening to this album, though. It's knocked Aphex Twin off the top spot on my iTunes for the first time this year and that ain't right.

I love me some Aphex but that shit's barely in my top 50.

iTunes? Sorry, last.fm - brain fart. Point remains though.

Chemical Brothers are nowhere near my favourite band, not even top 50, but it's just the perfect summery anthemness of this that's got me caning it.

And please don't dis Mr Twin, you will make me cry. He is at the apex of my confluence of loving of weirdy Radiophonic synth wub and loving of pointy nosed gingers.

okay "Horse Power"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You knew if anyone was gonna invent the genre of Acid Horse, it was gonna be them.

I think Cabaret Voltaire, Paul Barker and Al Jourgenson would have something to say about that.

No, that's Experimental Horse Music, not the same thing at all. Where's Mark S when you need him?

Just picked this up for $11.99 on my lunch break. Thoughts forthcoming.

more than jackie wilson it reminds me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRVOAz6BC1w

i like the vocals on the first track a lot -- imo the rave-y referentialism kinda saves it somehow

"Horse" is the only one I even remotely like on this new one; the whinnying is satisfyingly wtf.

It's placement in the track is very reminiscent of the cow moo in Chicken Lips' "Sweet Cow".

"Swoon" OMGGGGGGGGGGGG

Swoon has a nice riff, just wish there was more there compositionally

has a nice riff, just wish there was more there compositionally

^ could describe 90% of shoegaze tbh.

has a nice riff, just wish there was more there compositionally
^ could describe 90% of shoegaze rock music tbh.

― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor), Friday, June 25, 2010 11:36 PM (13 minutes ago)

fixed

actually, I totally rescind that as it makes little to no sense. I'm going to go not think about music for the rest of the night now, holler!

Swoon is just PERFECT just the way it is.

It's the absolute confluence of the two styles of music (shoegaze and dance) that don't need there to be any more there compositionally. It's all about texture and build, about taking that one perfect riff and ringing everything from it, over and over as a hypnotic until transcendence is achieved.

ulrich schnauss >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the song 'swoon'

You're so wrong it's not even funny.

Ulrich Schnauss (bless his little socks) manages to combine the most boring aspects of dance music with the most snooze-some aspects of shoegaze into an utterly soporific blend of snoozesome blandness.

He's a decent DJ, though, mind you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcO-bpkVs9A

YAWN

yes his beats are not exactly cutting-edge IDM, but then he isn't really about the beats. he's about the overwhelming, transportive sonic cocoon.

his subtlety, attention to detail and ear for multi-layered harmony + dissonance are incredible

but fine if you think he's bland then I ain't gonna be convincing you otherwise am I

although MOST boring? MOST snooze-some? dear christ

Louis, I've seen him live at least a dozen times. (For some reason he managed to get himself as the support act for every single shoegaze gig I was at for a two-year period.) One more airing of the single isn't going to convince me.

No dynamics, no change in the texture, just this endless churning out of this sticky goo clogging up my earholes. Endless chugging drivel. The only good thing was the woman who used to occasionally come out and sing, but then he swapped her for the dullard from Longview (sub-Coldplay college rock of the most turgid variety) and destroyed his only musical point of interest.

Boring. Even more boring than Slowdive on Klonopin. Snooozzzzzzzzzzzze.

But why the fuck are we talking about shit like that on a thread for an album as fun as this one?

level of discourse itt is gross, last time i talk about anything remotely british & shoegazy

lol @ the idea of deriving one's opinions of schnauss from his liveshow (which I don't imagine to be remotely as interesting as his records)

anyway peace, y'all can go back to your ivory towers of intolerance

"imagine" ? maybe you should actually experience the things you imagine before you dis other people for living in ivory towers.

The records are even *more* boring than his life show, if that's even remotely possible.

his music's all about small sonic details - stuff which is gonna get completely engulfed in a live setting - it's not about performance

but w/e, ASIP is a work of towering genius IMO and we're gonna have to ATD there

lol @ the idea of ridiculing people for having an earned reaction to something you've never experienced in any way and have made up in your own head

xpots

grrr @ yall

You are being pretty ridiculous even by your standards here, Louis.

Even more boring than Slowdive

Okay Kate I agree with everything you've said above but let's not talk about Slowdive like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCsqd435R-g

Um... Thomas and Hans-Peter...? I love you and all, but that's not a remix, that's pretty much a *cover*.

I am about to say something I have never ever ever said before in my life, and will probably never say again.

I think I prefer the Boys Noize remix to the Lindstrom & Prins Thomas one.

::stabs self with rusty fork and dies of shame::

Only 4 songs in but this is tooootally on its way to becoming one of my favorite albums of the year.

It feels like a less-angry XTRMNTR kinda

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/WidowOfDestiny/Jiggle_Panda.gif

I'd forgotten I had this. It's almost perfect work music.

It is. For a second I thought that read "It's almost a perfect work of music" and I was going to be all, "well, it is good, but come now".

haha not even I, master of unwarranted hyperbole, am going to go that far

ha I was just about to post "OMG 'Horse Power'"... but I see I did that months ago

seriously though, best song on the album by miles to my ears

K+D+M is my favorite on the album. It has this incredible anthemic feel and a great motorik groove to it. This album and Barking have been welcome surprises this year and I think sort of work as companions to each other. I didn't like We Are the Night either (outside of the instrumentals) so I was surprised to find out they could still bring it like this. "Escape Velocity" is such a banger. Or should I say smanger.

going to see them week after next - should I bother to listen to this first or just go ~experience~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybhp-d7fBAY

wow-e

ha I was just about to post "OMG 'Horse Power'"... but I see I did that months ago

lol I am predictable