Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own POLL*

I'm probably a stan of extended songs but this is truly down to Elektrobank or TPPR, went with Elektrobank just 'coz.

this album is solid

Piku (would be Lost In The K-Hole but always found it a bit too short)

I love love love this entire album to death

I'm probably voting "It Doesn't Matter" because a) TPPR will win anyway and b) it deserves a vote because it's awesome

I've been a sucker for the 1-2 punch of the last two songs since this came out, and find it hard to separate them (you know, like "Brain Damage"/"Eclipse" or "Heartbreaker"/"Living Loving Maid"). But fuck it, I went with "The Private Psychedelic Reel".

I've been a sucker for the 1-2 punch of the last two songs since this came out, and find it hard to separate them

otm

I really like "Where Do I Begin" but I don't need to hear it every time I decide to listen to TPPR. Nice segue, mind.

In fact, it's been quite a while. *puts WDIB on*

The end of WDIB is so bonkers and awesome

Shit, I haven't listened to it since Sept '06!!!

That ending when it goes mental, oh man. I am stoked for four minutes' time.

Shit, I haven't listened to it since Sept '06!!!

lol itunes era

The only time I've played the entire album straight through was Christmas Day '05 :-/

Ah yeah, I remember now. As bonkers tuneless workout endings by high-profile 90's electro acts go, this is good, but it ain't no "Narayan".

that better be a self-parody

dear HKM,

the last two minutes of "Narayan" >>>>> the last two minutes of "Where Do I Begin"

sincerely,

uh, no

I like "Naryan" a lot but that is just madness

Yes crazy talk.

OK, to qualify, I'm *just* talking about the buzzsaw bit, not the HUGE distorted electro climax just beforehand (or the gentle segue into TPPR)

Private Psychedelic Reels is the one where Mercury Rev play their mad homemade synth thing, isn't it? I'm gonna have to dig it out and find out.

Narayan's the one with the dude from Kula Shaker on isn't it?

yes to both of those

yeah, and the ENORMOUS mentalist psychedelic drum'n'clater ending, which has 0 to do with our Crispian xp

*clatter

YES. (i.e. the Mercury Rev link.)

What album is Naranyan on? I kinda gave up on them around the time of Surrender.

It would help if I could spell.

It's on The Prodigy's "Fat of the Land".

I gave up on the Chems circa Surrender as well, but Come With Us lured me back in and I loved We Are The Night.

to be fair the last minute or so of Narayan IS better than ppl remember (clue: Mills has stopped singing by this point)

TPPR made me totally bored of epic album closers as parting statement

never did get the Surrender hate (not that i ever want to listen to 'Dream On' ever ever)

Ha ha ha, I never liked The Prodigy.

It's funny how Chemical Bros were, like, *the* 90s dance superduo it was OK for rockists to like.

And they got away with it in a way that, say Justice, get loads of shit for doing essentially the same thing.

"Hey Boy Hey Girl" is one of their best singles ever but I had such a visceral hate reaction to "Music: Response" that it carried over into the rest of the album; that's another one I only ever played once and basically said "ugh, never again" to. Odds are if I heard it now, I'd like it a lot more!

It was that FREAKING AWFUL song with Barney Sumner on it that did it in for me. (Or am I thinking Primal Scream? I get them mixed up sometimes.)

This thread has inspired me. I'm going to stop downloading obscure The Factory b-sides and actually listen to Surrender for the first time, basically, since I bought it.

haha i hated music: response too and i cant remember why

first impulse is to vote for setting sun if im being honest

It was that FREAKING AWFUL song with Barney Sumner on it that did it in for me.

"Out Of Control"! I hated that one too, but then heard it out of the context of the album years later and was kind of into it, which is why I'm pretty sure that I'd be into the album now.

I thought Surrender was pretty awesome at the time but I haven't listened to it in years.

Surrender is awesome! I way prefer it to DYOH. Start with "Out Of Control" and let it play from there. The midsection is *just* brilliant (LFB>>>TSU>>>AFD)

"We Are The Night", if you trim the fat off it, is completely fucking wonderful as well, and TRULY underrated. "Burst Generator" and "We Are The Night" are up there in my Chems top 5.

Oh god, also HO HO HOPE Sandoval is on this record. A lot to hate.

Maybe "A Modern Midnight Conversation" as well.

i first heard 'Out Of Control' while on a train to Bristol en route to my first Glastonbury where the album was getting predictably rinsed all over the sun-drenched site from various stalls and tents so imo it remains totally fucking great

I am probably unhealthily obsessed with "Battle Scars".

yes

Hey you know what, Music: response isn't actually that bad. I really like the Sonic Boom VCS3 synth wubs it starts with.

Hmm, Surrender v DYOH is a tricky one. PPR > Dream On, but Let Forever Be > Setting Sun (even though I find "how does it feel like" to be irritatingly ungrammatical").

it's supposed to be "how does it feel, like...", scouser style

Hooray you have transformed it for me!

I'll vote for the obvious choice: "Setting Sun." Blew my mind.

As for Surrender, "Out of Control" and "Hey Boy: Hey Girl" compensate for Hope Sandoval and Mercury Fucking Rev.

Actually, in terms of the *music*, I'm liking it (Surrender) a lot more than I did at the time. Though barney's off key singing still bugs the heck out of me.

(I did hear a rumour that there was originally more backing that he was supposedly singing along with, and that they took it out in the mix to make it more minimal and Moroder, with the effect that his vocal riff no longer makes any sense at all.)

I think perhaps I judged it a bit too harshly because its release coincided with one of the most rabidly rockist periods of my life.

I really like "Where Do I Begin" ...

― I want sprinkles (country matters), Monday, 23 February 2009 16:48 (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Oh yeah, Beth Orton, innit?

surrender is epic

Sumner's guitar on "Out of Control" = some of his wildest.

It really falls down in the middle. There's a lot of skippable flab starting around the time Noel Gallagher opens his mouth and I keep waiting for it to pick back up again, and it doesn't.

haha oh yeah, I also wildly hated "Let Forever Be"

I recently went through a bout of relistening to all the albums (yay finally ripping all my collection at last) and I was most surprised how what I thought was a fairly standard formula for them over the years actually had more variety than I realized -- it's less obvious at points than, say, Basement Jaxx's twists and turns, but they managed the trick of 'we have our sound but we know what else is out there' pretty nicely.

I got through Let Forever Be, but I really reached for the skip button when it got to Asleep From Day. KILL KILL KILL KILL.

OK, Got Glint? just kicked in and I feel better.

So sorry to litter DYOH thread with Surrender gubbins. I was just curious about how I could love an album so much I wore holes in it, and dislike the follow up so much as to never investigate them again.

Just listening to Where Do I Begin and I don't remember the ending at all! I probably used to skip it 'cause of Beth Ort-yawn.

Not on this album, but "The Sunshine Underground" in dire need of more love

My Chems top 5:

1) Burst Generator (HAHAHAHAHA)
2) Elektrobank
3) TPPR
4) The Sunshine Underground
5) We Are The Night

btw "Star Guitar", along with the album it's on, is boring dreck, and the ILM love it gets is totally mystifying

well that's wrong, for sure, it's a fine track.

lol i haven't heard two of your choices. haven't been loving the chemical brothers since come with us, or even surrender really.

Like I say, "We Are The Night" is criminally underrated, to the point where it came comfortably within RYM's top 1000 lowest-rated albums ever. Worth it for those two songs alone, but there's more there to like.

doesn't ... matter. It
doesn't ... matter. It
doesn't ... matter. It
doesn't ... matter. It
doesn't ... matter. It

btw "Star Guitar", along with the album it's on, is boring dreck, and the ILM love it gets is totally mystifying

^^^^^^^^^^^ this

"Elektrobank" by a million miles. (And this is a good album, but "Electrobank" is like 73 types of good).

I'm going to say Get Up On It Like This is probably my favourite on this album, just to be a bit contrary.

Surrender is half a good album. I remember loving the singles, Music: Response, The Sunshine Underground (WAY better than TPPR), and Out Of Control (precursor to Shoot Speed / Kill Light) an awful lot. They never really held my interest for too long after that, though; too many singles with rent-a-vocalists as the USP rather than, you know, awesome fucking beats and hooks.

Out Of Control and The Sunshine Underground might be my favourite Chemical Brothers tracks, looking back, and the singles are awesome but the album at the whole as too many weak tracks on it.

I saw them play a festival in Portugal last year and they were totally acid and incredible, better than they've been for at least ten years. That said, a compilation of their Electronic Battle Weapon series would be better than any individual Chems album.

a compilation of their Electronic Battle Weapon series would be better than any individual Chems album.

i think they did this as a bonus disc on their most recent best-of.

It's funny, I voted for TPPR by instinct, as it was my fave when the album came out. But I went back and listened to it again, and realised that these days, it's not even close. Can I change my vote? I used to like the more traditional "rock" songs with guests on them, but now I tend towards the pure banging electro noise.

I BLAME ED'S BANGIN' SPEAKERS FOR RUINING MY MUSICAL TASTES!!!

Now I want to vote for Electrobank I think.

Got to vote for 'Elektrobank', still remember hearing it for the first time on a Radio 1 broadcast of a gig in late '96/early '97 - when it got to the end section I almost jumped out my seat (I was doing some homework at the time), looking back it was probably the first time anything had sounded properly psychedelic to me.

This is easily their best album - I gave up on them after Push The Button and only a couple of songs on Surrender did it for me last time I listened to it.

That said, a compilation of their Electronic Battle Weapon series would be better than any individual Chems album.

this was a bonus disc with their Brotherhood comp last year

Sofia workin it

This is my least favourite album by them, although I've never heard Push the Button. Despite their status as one of the handful of albums-based dance acts of that era, I think their singles and (particularly) remixes are much better. Surrender is pretty much the only one that works as an album, I think.

I don't even like the singles off DYOH one much! Will have to listen again before I vote.

Setting Sun is just awful. They'd been doing this mad live mix of Chemical Beats and Tomorrow Never Knows that it kind of grew out of, I think, but it really doesn't get close to how great that was.

I still remember hearing TPPR for the first time on a promo cassette and dragging myself down to the Heavenly Social with flu because I knew they'd play it out that night. Ended up having to go home in pieces before they even came on. But that was their first and best psychedelic wig-out - the wretched The Test proves that it's not that easy to pull off. I like the way that they used the soon-to-be-obligatory indie guest star to add weird hooks and textures rather than vocals, something I don't think they ever did again. Elektrobank a close second (mainly for the last two minutes blending into Piku), and Setting Sun is still probably the weirdest, heaviest UK number one ever.

A friend and I had a theory at the time that the album followed the progress of a night out: first the big beat good times, then a darker turn with Setting Sun and the acid bangers, then the wracked comedown of Where Do I Begin? and finally the cathartic recovery of TPPR. Quite where Get Up On It Like This fits in I'm not sure but I still hear the album that way. It's such a brilliantly dense, noisy record, with just this one shining moment of clouds-parting lushness at the end. I'm a big fan generally but they've never structured a record so well since.

Setting Sun is still probably the weirdest, heaviest UK number one ever

in many ways the Mouldy Old Dough of the 90s

Dorian's OTM here - what's so great about Dig Your Own Hole (and Exit Planet Dust, and by extension Orbital's Brown album) is that they helped define an approach to how a dance album should work, ie like a DJ set.

It's a shame they kind of redefined it afterwards in a less interesting way, from Surrender on (lets get loads of vocalists in and make it more like a classic rock album) in a way that had a pretty detrimental influence on dozens of albums from then on in. This is their last really coherent record (they've essentially been remaking Surrender for ten years now).

Agreed re; sequencing. That's what was so key, and what's been lost.

Elektrobank. The trouble with blok rockin beats is the source (23 skidoo) is so much better. If I knew the original of the elektrobank sample i might think that too.

Why do people have such a problem listening to dance music in a conventional album structure? It doesn't have to sound more like a mix to be coherent. Surrender, Come With Us and Push The Button all have roughly the same level of quality altho they did become predictable after Surrender true.

It's not the conventional album structure that's the issue, it's that they're all over the place and feel like compilations. I don't like the Justice album much but that's a conventional album structure and no one can accuse that of lacking coherence.

I am being totally rockist about this incidentally but I'm not sure I want to listen to another dance record with six different guest vocalists on it ever again.

too much posse

I am trying to pretend that the first three Basement Jaxx albums don't exist here, but they were coming from a very different place to the Chems.

the chems positioned this as 'the sgt pepper of big beat' for real, their whole thing was, why *not* structure it well? if that's rockist i don't want to be the other thing.

if those six vocalists were all singing on good tracks it'd be fine, but that's never been the case. i do agree with the crticism of this approach in that it became cliched and was often the band (whoever was doing it) trying something half-baked rather than sticking to what they do best.

Jaxx LPs are similar in some ways tho - every album has to end with some chilled out end-of-night/early-morning re-adjustment

I think most rock albums are sequenced pretty fucking badly anyway.

I've never been to DJ sets or nightclubs really anyway; the great thing about Brown or DYOH or whatever is that it transported me somewhere, not that it "mimicked a DJ set". If Coldplay could sequence an album properly rather than just dumping their songs together, they'd be dangerous.

I too am an unashamed fan of album sequencing, we're a dying breed :(

Album sequencing is the job of a good-eared producer, rather than your usual idiot musician. So it would make sense that Chemical Brothers paid attention to it. Bad sequencing can ruin a good album for me. (Can't remember which Sloan album it was that suffered from this, but it killed it for me until I was able to rip the tracks and resequence them.)

Maybe you're on to something that this is something that does come from a dance music perspective - sequencing being more the thing of a DJ... but that's not entirely true. I can remember from being in live bands, really working out what setlists worked best, to grab people with a a good hook, while at the same time gradually building the speed and the mood. It's tough, and it is different in a live setting than it is on an album.

I mean, the best sequenced album of the past year that I've heard is the LOTP album (yeah, them again) and they have pretty much said that was down to Alkan treating the album as a mixed-up DJ set rather than a standard "classic rock album."

I mean, the first album I ever heard that did that, really, was Screamadelica (yeah, yeah, laugh if you like, but I got it out again recently, and it made me not quite so ashamed of my former Scream obsession.)

DYOH really does have that kind of progression that makes it *feel* like a journey. Because, as a recovering rockist, that's how I tend to listen to dance music - in an album setting. At home. And DYOH worked as an album, as a complete whole - where Surrender was a couple of singles, a couple of guest spots and not so well strung together.

Also, DYOH had a lot of long, droney psychedelic pieces that really work... as DRONEROCK as well as dance music.

I think it really is telling, who approaches this kind of music coming out of a club setting, and approaches it out of a listening in your bedroom setting.

I mean, the best sequenced album of the past year that I've heard is the LOTP album (yeah, them again) and they have pretty much said that was down to Alkan treating the album as a mixed-up DJ set rather than a standard "classic rock album."

word to all of this

STOP AGREEING WITH ME. IT REALLY FREAKS ME OUT WHEN YOU DO THIS.

Phew! Thank God I'm not the only one.

Louis and Kate, up a tree, listening to p-r-o-g.

It would never work. He prefers Nu Secret Machines to School of Seven Bells.

OUCH

(I suspected that comment on the '08 albumz thread wouldn't pass unnoticed)

Actually, Louis, what's yr take on Justice? They sample Goblin, they are prog as fuck, ILX hates them.

This question is a total deal-breaker as to whether we can be sneaky sneaky progfriends or not. ;-)

omg you just referenced connan and the mockasins

like, that song is both one of the most disturbing and yet enjoyable NZ creep-pop romps I've probably ever heard

Have you seen the video? It's... so utterly wrong and yet so strangely right. I dreamed about those little dancing doghead girls last night.

GET A ROOM

The bit with the spiralling trombone zoom-shot is actually ingrained onto my mind

Answer the question! Jooosteeeece. Chemicals Brothers for the naughties or ironic sub-Daft Punk wank?

It's important.

Also, Kate, have you heard the B-SIDE? It's called "I Nude You" and is actually even scarier/creepier/weirder than SSD, until it decides to turn into an epic and actually rather enjoyable acid guitar-solo

I uh haven't heard much Justice, but I've not been particularly fond of what I've heard, although this has only been from a couple of very fleeting listens

my lovely thread...

Enjoy, HKM:

That middle-eight is like the end of Irreversible but with even more implicit psychological trauma

Sorry, Enrique. :-(

Too much Turkish Delight. It has the same effect on me as carrot cake.

That middle-eight is like the end of Irreversible but with even more implicit psychological trauma

― I want sprinkles (country matters), Tuesday, February 24, 2009 3:42 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

straight to 102 motherfucker

Dorian's OTM here - what's so great about Dig Your Own Hole (and Exit Planet Dust, and by extension Orbital's Brown album) is that they helped define an approach to how a dance album should work, ie like a DJ set.

whoa there, how is DYOH like a DJ set? The actual style of music on that record veers it so far away from a DJ set it's untrue.

At least Surrender (and the actually v good Come With Us, anyone want to stick neck out and say it's their best record) had more straight up dance tracks on them, even amongst the overdone collaborations.

The real tragedy was that shit one with the Secret Machines and stuff on it.

maybe favourite chemical brothers record

how is DYOH like a DJ set?

like a big beat dj set... not literally; it's a 60min LP, but it does pretty much what dorian says.

The actual style of music on that record veers it so far away from a DJ set it's untrue.

The actual style of music is irrelevant. It is like a DJ set in that it mostly flows together and has an obvious shape to it. Maybe "mix album" rather than DJ set though.

CONCEPT ALBUM is the phrase that's an elephant in the room here.

No it isn't.

the chems positioned this as 'the sgt pepper of big beat' for real

― meme economist (special guest stars mark bronson), Tuesday, February 24, 2009 1:23 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I like this record but it has aged really badly to be fair. Surrender or Come With Us both top this for me.

tho they prob have aged badly too

I don't think I've played any of them in at least five years actually but strangely Surrender is the only one this thread has made me want to go back to.

i think surrender might be better but this was more ehhh personally significant.

Charming biographical insight.

i try not to go over on to two lines, disrupts the cut n thrust <- ilm pro tip.

Ronan repping S and CWU rather than this because he's younger? Most of us doing the hard love for DYOH were 18/19 when it came out?

Matt, you contributed to the WATN thread and that came out less than 2 years ago IIRC

Most of us doing the hard love for DYOH were 18/19 when it came out?

Errrmmmm... not quite. God, you youngsters.

oldsters more like. i was 16.

saw 'em live on the DYOH tour...fucken quality rave that was

how old were you? you must have been about 11.

I listened to DYOH when it came out, but wasn't club going age, sure.

10 and loving it, pilly-willy apart

It's not even about being club-going age, I'd have thought; it'sabout finishing your A Levels and driving around Torquay in your mate's dad's SEAT Ibiza listening to Primal Scream and Chemical Brothers and the dub remix of One Big Family by Embrace.

Refusing to parse the phrase "pilly-willy apart" in case it's sexual.

Most of us doing the hard love for DYOH were 18/19 when it came out?

oh man, I wish

I think Ronan may have a point with Come With Us; that vies with Dig Your Own Hole as my favorite Chems album.

xp: lol Nick

I was... errrrmm... 27? 28? I spent a lot of time in the UK that summer, and the Chemical Brothers were *everywhere* so I just have a lot of nostalgic appreciation for this album. They headlined some festival that I went to and it was just magical.

I have the same kid of pavlovian response to Cornershop's Brimful of Asha, too. But, funnily enough, the same time and place made me absolutely hate Fatboy Slim.

oh man, now there is someone whose music has not aged well outside of a few key songs

"santa cruz" amirite

DYOH and possible the chemicals in general is all about one hot sunny day in a park just outside of brighton.

It's not even about being club-going age, I'd have thought; it'sabout finishing your A Levels and driving around Torquay in your mate's dad's SEAT Ibiza listening to Primal Scream and Chemical Brothers and the dub remix of One Big Family by Embrace.

― Sickamous Mouthall (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, February 24, 2009 4:18 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was with you all the way up to the end there

TS: havin' it in Ibiza vs havn't it in a Seat Ibiza

vs. neverhad't in a seat

This thread has been locked by a mean administrator.

OK, OK, Ok, enough Chemical Brothers for now. The 90s are over. I'm gonna go off and listen to Connan Mockasin until I puke. Even if his voice is so fey he makes Bobb Trimble sound like Danzig by comparison.

I can't even imagine that level of feyness. He must be made of meringue.

HE TOTALLY IS.

I only realised after the fact that Kate's CATM reference springs from an LOTP support-slot. I thought they were a special secret only I and other student radio DJs knew about, having received their single in the mail about a year and a half ago

Sorry I'm just not cool enough to be a student radio DJ.

::rolls eyes::

Oh that magical circle where the special people get promo CDs from jobbing indie bands in the post.

No, I mean that I thought they were, like, totally and utterly obscure, and that people only heard them if their PR company sent them their records xp

Exactly, Matt

Only student DJs actually get excited about getting CDs from jobbing indie bands. Bitter, jaded ex music journos tend to file all promo CDs in the Round File.

I chucked about two dozen promo freebie bollocks things in the bin last week. I've not even written for anywhere in MONTHS. Leave me alone.

Believe me, it got less and less exciting after the first half-dozen

(Not to try and OUT-INDIE Louis or anything, but I did actually find out about Connan from some genuine Teenagers - I have my ear to the ground of today's modern yoot, me. I find out about bands the old fashioned way - I read them getting slashed on LiveJournal!)

I still have huge piles of unlistened-to near-certain-crap lying about, and have fantasies of one day remixing them all together into a brilliant work of epic genius

Oh man Kate that is unimaginable

back with another one of those block rockin' beats

I am sorry for making this thread about Connan Mockasin and Bobb Trimble fey out-indie-ing each other posturing. (That is some slash that needs to happen... hrmmm...)

Ooh ooh yeah, Big Beat, electro, um, Chemical Brothers, yeah. HEY GIRLS. HEY BOYS. SUPERSTAR DJs HERE WE GO!

getting promos as a student was like Christmas every day. i got Middle Of Nowhere a few months before release, before internet leaks really took off.

Great finds in student radio promo piles: years ago when I first worked at the library and it was the music & film department, we had the old uni radio vinyl collection, which was mostly utter shit (a Momus 12", I mean, COME ON), but in amongst all the crap I found a 12" copy of the Lazarus EP by the Boos, and a 12" of Blue by Bark Psychosis. So it's not all total crap. Just most of it.

getting promos as a student was like Christmas every day. i got Middle Of Nowhere a few months before release, before internet leaks really took off.

― O Supermanchiros (blueski), Tuesday, February 24, 2009 5:22 PM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

samesies... not too many rap cds. we had handsome boy modelling club.

those were the days when you actually got good things in the mail

like, in our radio library, there's actually quite a lot of good stuff from the 90's/early 00's, but the recent additions have seen some crazy drop-off

you hardly ever got American music

even music hacks seem to have to go into the record company offices to, like, hear what they're meant to be reviewing nowadays. *shakes head*

ANYWAY.

who is this doin' this synthetic type o' alpha beta psychedelic funkin'

i actually like this idea of hearing an album for the first time with a bunch of people in similar position in same place tho

it's like FILMS omg

k-hole & electrobank my favorites when i last listened to this (july 24th, 1998, 3:43-4:46 pm). went w k-hole cuz it's too short, which is always nice

lol

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Where Do I Begin". This is my least favourite Chemicals album and I have no idea why people consider it their best. I like their underrated noughties work generally much better, although the debut probably remains my favourite Chemicals album.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I think this is almost the perfect outcome

I guess I'm just another un-hip late comer to the Chems who worshipped Surrender apon release and thought Dig was feh, aside from the awesome-even-to-idoits Setting Sun... all of which makes me the height of douche baggary.

i wanna know what geir thinks of the last 90 seconds of his favourite track

This record sounds so good to me now, first time listening in probably over a decade. Even the overplayed at the time "Setting Sun" is sexy as hell.

I love ILX.

K Hole!!!

So so dope

Their first album too, is a lot more banging than I remember.

First album weirdly not talked about much, I find?

I've always kinda felt the first two albums were secretly way too tuff n ruff outside the singles for a lot of people, Surrender seemed to be greeted with a lot of pent up enthusiasm amongst friends of mine who wanted a dance album that was "crossover" in substance as well as reputation (to be fair they were all 17 years old).

Opposite here. Surrender was not well greeted as far as I remember. Way too diluted and Britpoppy.

yeah I was reading magazines and on a bunch of dumb mailing lists at the time and it seemed like a lot of people were not a fan of Surrender - though I liked it quite a bit

I do revisit Dig from time to time and I agree, it ought to sound terribly dated by now but it still rules.

I haven't heard surrender for a while but memory is a couple good tracks and mostly disappointment.

rarely listen to exit planet dust, dig your own hole or surrender (lol @ my last post itt), but all 3 still sound great when i do, especially dig. massive, mighty, and dated just right. beyond the odd stray track ("star guitar"), i'm not much interested in what came after. so put me down with the hivemind, i guess.

Star Guitar is great yeah.

I definitely remember Surrender being met with mild disappointment compared to the first couple, especially given the monstrous single that preceded it. Then again it was 1999 and that was happening with most of the big album dance releases.

the best thing about the first album is that there's no Noel Gallagher on it. Somehow I really like the Tim Burgess track.

His voice is so fx'd up, tho (Noel's), it's not blatantly obvious that it's hum

him

rediscovered my love for this and EPD by adding them to my workout playlist. they always deliver too.

This has always been a favorite of mine. From start to finish it is damn solid and the last 2 tracks create a hugely epic ending. I'd probably vote for Elektrobank.

I was recently stoked to discover Got Glint off of Surrender heavily sampled Bernard Fevre. I was recently listening to Cosmos 2043 and Earth Message was essentially a stripped down version of the song. Fun times.

RE: Surrender (upthread), I remember liking it quite a lot at the time of its release, even if (or because?) it was different from the (studio) albums that proceeded it: https://web.archive.org/web/20010112123300/http://www.skinny.com/music/reviews/1999/06/html/chemicalbros2.html

I heard Surrender as the crossover hybrid that appealed to Friends of Tim F; its more accessible aesthetics as a set list complement to the to roughest moments of Exit and Dig. (Fwiw, my friends and I were in our mid-20's.)

I always forget how aggressive and just loud "Setting Sun" is.

When I was 17 it sounded very dangerous and intense and sexy and it still kind of does.

I also remember Where Do I Begin completely blowing my mind at the time, the idea of a "singer songwriter" doing a looped, four-line, wistful poem over a druggy backwards guitar sample and then going into a massive breakbeat. My god that sounds terrible when I write it out but it's sooooo good.

25 years... Time can be scary sometimes.

all the alt mixes on the reissue are really good. Especially the one of it doesn't matter. Listen to that one with some good headphones and you'll have a good time.

Might have to pick it up, I bought the original LP back in the day without a way to play it and when I finally got a turntable I found out I got two of the first record

Surprisingly this record actually sorta holds up

Yeah, it slaps.

Perfect album that changed my life when I was 9

"sorta"?????????