Still block rockin’ after more than 30 years, the Chemical Brothers are currently in one of their busiest ever phases: they have just released a new album, a coffee table book is being published this month and their latest tour is about to begin. To mark it all, they will answer your questions on anything about their long career – post them in the comments below.
The duo of Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands met in Manchester in 1989 as the rave scene was cresting, and began DJing in a sweet spot between hip-hop and dance music. Initially named the Dust Brothers, they began producing their own tracks which chewed up those genres and spat them out in grimy, heavy-hitting, acid-splashed breakbeat and loping, psychedelic trip-hop, beginning with Song of the Siren in 1992.
Emerging alongside the Prodigy, Orbital, Underworld and more as the UK became a global hub for ambitious dance music, their debut album Exit Planet Dust hit the Top 10 but the followup Dig Your Own Hole turned them into stars. Having already crossed over with the British guitar scene with Tim Burgess collaboration Life Is Sweet, a single with Noel Gallagher, Setting Sun, took them to No 1 – a back-to-back chart topper with Block Rockin’ Beats, which also helped buoy considerable US success.
On next album Surrender, the Gallagher connection returned for Let Forever Be alongside further Mancunian royalty in New Order’s Bernard Sumner on Out of Control, while Hey Boy Hey Girl became perhaps the defining song of the late-00s big beat scene. Live shows scaled the tracks up to stadium proportions and they performed one of the all-time great Glastonbury headline sets in 2000.
Staying relevant in dance culture is one of the trickiest things in all music but the duo managed it, with the likes of Star Guitar intensifying the euphoria; Galvanize doing exactly that to their career in 2005, taking them back to the Top 3; and cannily chosen collaborators since, including Beck, St Vincent and Kele Okereke, keeping their vocal lines fresh and evocative. Between 1997 and 2015 they scored six UK No 1 albums in a row.
Most recently, they put out the album For That Beautiful Feeling (with Beck back in the fold) and on 26 October they will publish Paused in Cosmic Reflection, a visually splendid book looking back over their career with collaborators such as Gallagher, Beth Orton, Wayne Coyne and Michel Gondry chipping in. The same day, they also begin another eyeball-jangling, eardrum-troubling UK and Ireland tour in Glasgow, then visiting Manchester, Leeds, Dublin, Birmingham and London.
Before they head off they’ll answer your questions – post them in the comments below by 10am BST on Monday 16 October, and we’ll publish their answers in the Film & Music section on 20 October, as well as online.
