Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own POLL*

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