| DJ Sets ::The Chemical Brothers (TOM
ROWLANDS & ED SIMONS)
Since they first met a decade ago, the
Chemical Brothers have been on a mission. Their aims: to find
the sounds no one had heard before, to push their music as
far as it will go, to make each record fresher and more exciting
than the last. And from "Song To The Siren" in 1992
to the brain-blitzing mutant psychedelia of their third album,
Surrender, that's what they've done. On the way they've invented
(and transcended) big beat, toured the globe, remixed the
world and his brother, soundtracked some of the messier nights
out of the last few years and made some of the most influential
music of the decade.
Ed Simons (tall, curly hair) and Tom Rowlands (taller, long
hair) met while studying history at Manchester Poly in 1989.
They'd come from the south to Manchester for the music and
launched themselves at the club scene with a vengeance. From
nights at the legendary Hacienda, to raves in Blackburn and
misbehaviour at clubs like Justin Robertson's Spice and Most
Excellent they soaked it all up. When they started to DJ ("borrowing'
the name the Dust Brothers from the American producers of
the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique), they put their own spin
on things. During their first residency at Naked Under Leather
(as debauched as its name suggests) they established a party-starting
reputation for going where most other DJs feared to tread:
joining the dots between acid house, hip hop and rock.
Tom was already part of struggling Henley-on-Thames Balearic
band Ariel, but when he went into the studio with Ed in 1992
everything clicked into place. The result was "Song To
The Siren", a record that mixed breakbeats, sirens, shuddering
bass and ethereal indie vocals. They sent one of the 500 copies
to Andrew Weatherall, who played it every time he DJed and
signed the duo to his Junior Boys Own label.
1994 was the year that the Chemical Brothers changed dance
music. For starters, there were the groundbreaking "14th
Century Sky" (featuring Chemical Beats) and "My
Mercury Mouth" EPs and a track donated to the charity
album Serious Road Trip. Rapidly becoming the most in demand
remixers in the country, they also reworked everyone worth
reworking, from the Manic Street Preachers to Saint Etienne.
In one fortnight alone they tackled Prodigy, Primal Scream
and the Charlatans and came out on top every time. They also
made their live debut at Weatherall's Sabresonic club. Finally,
for 13 weeks that summer and autumn, they helmed the decks
at London's notorious hedonism hotspot the Heavenly Social
and introduced everyone who could get in (including Paul Weller,
Tricky and Primal Scream) to the delights of dancing to Barry
White, Oasis, Chicago acid and Eric B & Rakim all in one
night.
The duo also played acetates of tracks from their own forthcoming
debut album, Exit Planet Dust. Signing to Virgin, the Chemical
Brothers (now renamed after a dust-up with the original Dust
Brothers) finally released it in June 1995. It sold 275,000
copies in Britain alone and over a million copies worldwide,
while the singles "Leave Home" and "Life Is
Sweet" both went Top 20 in the UK. With guest vocalists
Tim Burgess and Beth Orton, the album captured everything
that was exciting about the Social: messy, ferocious and often
emotional.
Other producers soon copied the Chemical formula and the
duo inadvertently spawned the entire big beat movement, with
artists like Fatboy Slim still citing them as the original
inspiration. Two years later, even U2 were making Chemical-style
tracks.
