Can You Dig It?

Rip It Up, Issue 237, 1 May 1997, Page 18

Can You Dig It?

The Chemical Brothers’ first record, Exit Planet Dust, began with the words, ‘The brother’s gonna work it out’. This month heralds the arrival of album number two, Dig Your Own Hole, and Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are, ‘Back with another of those block rockin ’ beats’.

It’s just after 10 in the morning on a “grey” Monday in late March, and Rowlands is sitting in the kitchen of his South London flat, cradling the telephone and gulping coffee. The evening before, he and Simons appeared as guest DJs at a club in Manchester, and Rowlands apologises for his lack of get-up-and-go, laying the . blame on a sleep-free night. f From half a world away, gf Rowlands comes across as fl an extremely

unassuming type of bloke. He seems embarrassed when questioned about the music of the Chemical Brothers, and deals with the situation in one of two ways: he either begins on a rambling open-ended tangent, or struggles hopelessly to articulate a reasonable reply. While the arrival of Dig Your Own Hole is being treated in dance circles as a sort of second coming, Rowlands almost absent-mind-edly down plays the affair; “It’s / just me and Ed working in the studio, and that’s what came out.’’ As Madonna once phrased it, “Music can be such a revelation.” * Two years ago, Exit Planet Dust If was just that: a joyous collection o // pummelling hip hop beats mashed r with squelchy acid house sounds I sirens. Included on offer jre the manic break beats of eave Home’, the soothing w ppy vibe of‘One Too Many arnings’, and ‘Alive Alone’, a ‘uld-have-been-cheery pop jne turned into something lore sinister. The album ave Rowlands and Simons !“ nd sirens. Included offer were the manic break beats of ‘Leave Home’, the soothing trippy vibe of ‘One Too Many w Mornings’, and ‘Alive Alone’, a f Dould-have-been-cheery pop tune turned into something more sinister. The album gave Rowlands and Simons lod-like status amongst the UK dance set, sold over 250,000 r □pies, and resultd in the duo ig asked to mix the likes of mal Scream, igy and the unanatans. The Chemical Brothers had well and truly arrived. Last October, they further cemented their status with the psychedelic single ‘Setting Sun’, that featured Noel Gallagher on lead vocals and entered the UK charts at Number 1. Today, upon the unveiling of Dig Your Own

Hole, Rowlands simply says, “This is what we’ve come up with, here’s some more if you want it.’’ Indirectly, he acknowledges that when you’re riding high with the Prodigy and Underworld as the biggest dance acts in the UK, making records is a painless business, free of label dramas and financial concerns, and there’s no one to one to answer to besides yourself. “The new record, the first time anyone at the record label heard it was after it had been cut and was on CD. There was no input from outside on anything, it was all generated by us, which is exactly the position we want. If someone signs us, they sign our opinion about music and sign our opinion about everything to do with what we do. Even though it sounds cliched, the only pressure we really feel is to make a record we both like. We think we’ve ■bk developed a sound we can -IB call our own and I think on album the sound has just been pushed further and goes in different directions. Because we do things ’cause

we get excited by them or we enjoy them, I think this record is a bit more adventurous. When you’re sitting in the studio you want to make new sounds people haven’t heard before.” Dig Your Own Hole was pieced together at Orinoco Studios in South-East London. The facility is named after Enya’s album Orinoco Flow, the album title inspired by graffiti on a wall near the studio. The Chemical Brothers commenced work prior to Christmas 95. During the English autumn last year, they “knuckled down” to record the bulk of the album in one concentrated period of working. From beginning to end, Dig Your Own Hole took one-and-a-half

years to make — an eternity considering the rapidly changing face of electronic music — though Rowlands says the new songs sound as fresh now as on the day they were conceived. “People have asked us if the songs should be updated, but our songs go through so many phases and we live with them for quite a long time, so they are always changing. The way we

k work, we don’t usually B do a song and finish it, f we work on several ’ songs at the same time for months, then they come together and arrive at the same time. We think if we’ve stood by a song for that long, and it’s passed the test of time with us, it’s cool. We look at it

more like a cohesive unit than a collection of things, it’s representative of a certain time for us.”

When crafting their albums, Rowlands and Simons have a big ace up their sleeve. They are both regular clubs DJs and therefore have the opportunity to test new material on an ideal audience.

Whilst recording Dig You Own Hole, the duo were deejaying weekly at London’s famous Heavenly Social night, and would play new tracks to the packed clubs to see what tunes would spark the most fervent crowd response.

“It’s quite a crucial part of how we make records”, explains Rowlands. “We were deejaying every Saturday night, and it was good for us ’cause we’d be in the studio all week, then we’d make some DATs up and go and play them at the club, so we could see how people react and what they’re into. A lot of

people who make electronic music, even though they’re making it for the dancefloor, are people who tend not to go out, they sit in their studio and live in a world totally separate from reality and what people are listening to. Being in clubs

and on the dancefloor, that’s where we come from, and that’s why we wanted to make these records, through seeing how music affects people.” Rowlands and Simons met at Manchester University in 1989, and bonded through a mutual love of acidjiouse and hip-hop. They spent the next two years going to clubs five nights a week, before establishing their own club night, Naked Under Leather, where they deejayed together under the the Dust Brothers moniker. In 1992 they put out their first single, ‘Song to the Siren’, that was re-released by hip label Junior Boy’s Own, and from then on the Chemical Brothers were a recognised name to anyone who had a clue about the UK dance scene. The duo have progressed to the forefront of elec-

tronic dance music in a remarkably short time, and Rowlands says the Chemical Brothers first live gig seems like only last week; “I can remember it well: we played at the back of this hall, everybody was facing the other way, and we just mixed in with the DJ — obviously things are a bit different now.” Today, the Chemical Brothers regularly play to massive crowds at major English festivals such as Glastonbury and Reading, and last year they supported Oasis at Knebworth in England in front of 120,000 fans. Rowlands mentions the Chemical Brothers are toying with the idea of staging a show at Wembley Arena, a venue normally only played by rock bands, but he says the growing popularity of dance music makes the venture possible. “There has been a shift in electronic music in the past two years, and the reason for that is the bands who are making electronic albums now, also play live — the Prodigy is built on their live show. A lot of people who don’t want anything to do with club culture, dance music has now been opened up to them because they understand bands who they can go

and see at a gig, ’cause they’re up with the rock ’n’ roll way of things. That’s one of the reasons [electronic music] is taking off in America — even though there has been a strong underground scene in

America for years — now people like Rolling Stone and MTV are getting hold of it because they understand bands that play live and make albums.” On the cover of the April 97 issue of UK mag Select, Rowlands and Simons are pictured with cheesy grins, and inside the writer of their story announces America is ‘ready to exchange Billy Corgan for break beats’. Madonna may have spent fourmillion dollars for the right to release Prodigy albums in the States, however Rowlands says, at present, the truth is being concealed by hype. “It seems like there’s a feeling for this music and people are starting to get into it, but it’s in the very early stages, the number of people involved is minuscule. From what I see, there are kids who’ve had enough of listening to Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, and are looking for something new, but nobody is ‘taking on America’, so to speak.” Rowlands also shoots down the spreading school of thought that says rock music is dying; “I hate it when people say techno is killing rock ’n’ roll, I think it’s a terrible way of looking at music, that one type of music comes and replaces another type, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Central to the way we make our records is the inspiration from all different types of music, it all exists together, and I’d hate to be seen as a part of something that’s killing something else.” The Chemical Brothers played their

second live show in Florida, and have travelled to the USA to perform nine times. In America they’re constantly causing confusion, and have found themselves described as ‘the Aerosmith of machine music’. Rowlands and Simons are keen to avoid further disorder, and for that reason have rejected offers to play the last three Lollapalooza festivals. “We don’t want to go play somewhere if we’re going to be in the car-park at three in the afternoon. The way we play live is

quite immersed in club culture as opposed to ‘c’mon, let’s rock!’ culture, and if people see us and it’s at the wrong kind of thing and the wrong atmosphere, they’re going to get the wrong idea and come away with a negative feeling about it, and we don’t want that.”

Rowlands won’t be drawn into a discussion on the Chemical Brothers’ part in the expansion of electronic dance music into the USA, saying he prefers to leave that kind of talk up to the record companies;

“We do what we do, then when the record’s done they do what they do, it’s up to them to sell it. For us, [America] is just a place where people are buying our records and there’s a demand for us to go there to play. If people are interested and want us to come to their country, we go there.”

Rowlands reveals the Chemical Brothers were planning to take part in the final Big Day Out concerts in New Zealand and Australia last January, but were committed to completing Dig Your Own Hole. He says the duo may tour down under in November.

My favourite Chemical Brothers story involves last year’s Wine & Food Festival at Hagley Park in Christchurch, and a crowd of 25,000 people. A sound engineer friend who is mixing several of the bands (“horrible MOR fodder”) performing plays Exit Planet Dust during a break, and is soon besieged by drunk middleaged couples asking who this amazing group is and where can they buy the album.

“That’s weird,” says Rowlands, “we’ve heard stories of that sort of thing happening a lot, people who wouldn’t usually hear us enjoying the music. It’s cool when that happens, but after saying that, we’re not on this conversion kick of turning people onto dance music, we’re quite happy with what we’re doing. Personally, I’m not on a crusade to change people’s opinions about the music they listen to, if they don’t want it they don’t have to have it, and if people get into it and they go with it, that’s cool too. All Ed and I have ever wanted, is to make music and have fun. To us, that’s what it’s all about.”

“A lot of people who make electronic music, even though they’re making it for the dancefloor, are people who tend not to go out, they sit in their studio and live in a world totally separate from reality and what people are listening to. ”

JOHN RUSSELL