Born in the Echoes
The Chemical Brothers
Virgin EMI
Two stars
So The Chemical Brothers have released their first new album since 2010. In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit we have history. I loved them. Alongside the likes of Fatboy Slim and Beastie Boys, they soundtracked some of the best years of my life.
I even found myself honoured to be asked to DJ at the official launch of their 2002 album, Come With Us. It was a high point of my career – but not theirs. Their high points had already happened by then, in the 1990s, with Exit Planet Dust, Dig Your Own Hole and Surrender.
I’ve heard, and been unimpressed by, several albums since – including, if I’m honest, that 2002 opus. This one hasn’t changed the pattern.
Tom and Ed seem to have been mostly listening to/been influenced by minimal techno since 2010. Technically, they still sound on point, but they forgot to bring in any excitement to the party.
The album starts promisingly, with a sample seemingly lifted directly from Fatboy Slim's Song for Lindy. Have big-beat bands finally thrown off their shackles and gone: "Do you know? I know we're not trendy anymore, but let's just make big daft breakbeats and be what we are," one asks oneself?
Not in The Chemical Brothers’ case. Aurally torturous soprano disco vocals quickly ruin the mood and, as the album progresses, they seem to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks – except the big, chunky breaks they were once known and loved for.
EML Ritual is a third-rate Nitzer Ebb, reminding us how bad industrial techno was when it was done by the first-rate lot, such as Nitzer Ebb. I'll See You There is a nice, psychedelic tune, but I'm sure someone already did it – oh yes, it was The Chemical Brothers. In a track called Setting Sun. In 2002.
Perhaps in the hope of salvaging things, they drag Grammy-winner Beck in for a collaboration on the album's closing tune, Wide Open. It sounds like a Beck album filler, at best, and possibly gives unnecessary credence to Kanye West's theory that the Grammy should have gone to Beyoncé, or whomever he was harping on about this year.
It genuinely hurts to be quite so scathing about an album by a band I once loved so much, but this has nothing to offer anyone in the 2015 music market. The kids who like dance music will be hooked on the massive dumb drops that EDM offers. The grown-ups who like the Chem’s old indie-dance are no doubt listening to Ed Sheeran by now, though I’ll never understand why.
The overall sense is of a band desperate to evolve, but not sure what they're evolving into. Block Rockin' Beats, after all these years, still sounds fresher, more exciting and more honest than "music-by-computer-with-a-couple-of-guests" dross such as Born in the Echoes.
cnewbould@thenational.ae
