Brothers from another planet - interview with Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons of the duo Chemical Brothers - Interview

Interview, April, 1997 by Ray Rogers

There's a good reason why the Chemical Brothers are big news in music right now: They are reinventing, reinvigorating, and reigniting the thrill of danceable pop

With the advent of a newly coined genre of music that's being called "electronica" - a hybrid of techno, dance, drum and bass, and other such computer-driven musics - debate is mounting over whether traditional raw rock is being threatened by unfeeling technology and things that go bleep in the night. But any War of the Worlds hysteria can be out on hold because of clubland's truest Innovators of sound, Britain's Chemical Brothers.

The London-based duo of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons has been an explosive force in dance music at home since 1994, when they released their debut record, Exit Planet Dust. Now they're causing a chemical reaction in America. The pair, who met while studying medieval history at university and deejaying at local clubs, are musical mixologists, blending dance-club euphoria with rock 'n' roll attitude over hip-hop beats, concocting some of the most intoxicating music around - much of it purely Instrumental. Their second album, Dig Your On Hole (Astralwerks), boasts the swirling psychedelic single "Setting Sun" (which features Noel Gallagher of Oasis on vocals) and has set off the group's most radical effect yet: torching the distinctions between styles of music. At the rats they're going, we'd say the Chemical Brathers are about to change the chemical composition of pop.

RAY ROGERS: Is it true that electronics is "the next big thing"?

ED SIMONS: We've heard this whole thing about dance music becoming the new alternative. We don't really think of music in terms of being blocks, interchanging with each other -

TOM ROWLANDS: Or replacing each other. It's just weird the way everyone talks here, like, "This is the future. You won't listen to rock records next year. You'll listen to electronic records."

RR: What you do is a mix of styles anyway.

ES: If you are trying to identify what the enemy is, obviously the enemy is having to listen to Celine Dion or really bland R&B - not those "alternative" types of music. When people talk about dance music being on a mission to take over the airwaves, that doesn't really seem right to me, either. I don't want my radio station to go all techno; that's not why I'm making music. I like good pop music, and I like good rock records.

RR: Why do you think electronic music is taking off right now?

TR: It's a reaction to the fact that over the past four years the main thing that young people have done in England is dance. That's been the main leisure pursuit for people ages sixteen to twenty-five.

ES: It's how people coexist in England, by dancing together.

RR: Since the songs you write don't use a traditional verse-and-chorus structure, where do you start?

TR: Actually, we do think in those terms. We spend a lot of time on structure to make our records a bit more pop. Our record isn't a sprawling thing.

ES: "Leave Home," which is on the first album, was described as a great pop song because it's got a moment in it when you say, "Wow, that's the moment of that record." It's like how a Beatles record has a great middle eight somewhere in it.

RR: What I mean is that the music isn't arranged around lyrics.

TR: It's not arranged around vocals. It's arranged around sounds and drums.

ES: The starting point for each track is probably a good break.

TR: "Smokin' rhythm."

ES: And then we'll just add more and more things: hooks and bits and bobs.

RR: Your albums are largely Instrumental, but your first hit here In the States, "Setting Sun," has a vocal on It. Do you think the song would have taken off so quickly if you didn't have Noel Gallagher or someone like him singing on it?

ES: Well, a lot of people still have a stumbling block with music that's instrumental. I can't think of any really big band that makes instrumental music.

TR: Mike Oldfield! [laughs]

RR: Kenny G.

TR: Kenny G, well that's more like it. But I feel that the saxophone is merely an extension of his voice.

ES: A vocal draws people in.

RR: A lot of people, over here at least, still think of electronic music as cold or unfeeling. But yours certainly isn't. What do you think connects the audience to it?

ES: Well, what we were just saying about bits of a record one can grab hold of. It isn't a relentless or repetitive trancelike state we're after. It's infused with the rock dynamic - it kind of surges.

TR: I think it's really cool and quite a feat when you can manage to get emotions out of electronics; when you have clinical and computerized music that's also really stirring. Basically, we like things to move you. If our record comes on in a club, we want people to remember it and think, "That was the one that physically did something to me."

RR: Your live shows are so powerful. What do you hope to do when you perform?

TR: When we play, we're trying to replicate that feeling of a club, of people coming for the night and getting this whole sensory experience. It's quite a '60s idea, this. We just hope people hear things they hadn't heard before and go with them. It is quite a break with the long tradition of people seeing music live. So . . . [deadpans] it's pretty important.