The Chemical Brothers

The Chemical Brothers are an English electronic music duo formed by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons in Manchester in 1989. They were pioneers (along with the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, the Crystal Method, and other acts) in bringing the big beat genre to the forefront of pop culture. After attracting Virgin Records, the duo achieved further success with second album ''Dig Your Own Hole'' (1997), which topped the UK charts. In the UK, they have had six No. 1 albums and 13 top-20 singles, including two chart-toppers.

Their name came about in 1995 after they dropped their original moniker the Dust Brothers due to the existence of a different band with the same name. In the United States, they have won six Grammy Awards including Best Rock Instrumental Performance, Best Dance Recording and Best Dance/Electronic Album of the year as recently as 2020.

History

1984–1995: Formation and early incarnations

Ed Simons was born the son of a barrister mother and a father he has described as "absent". After finishing an "expensive" public school with 11 O levels and three A levels, he continued on to study history, especially late medieval history, at the University of Manchester.

Tom Rowlands was raised in Henley-on-Thames. He met Simons at the University of Manchester in 1989; they shared an interest in raves and club-going. Rowlands chose Manchester primarily to immerse himself in its music scene in general and the Fac 51 Hacienda in particular.

Rowlands was also in a band called Ariel prior to meeting up with Simons. He formed Ariel in London with friends Brendan Melck and Mathew Berry. Their first single was "Sea of Beats", which was essentially a white label. Before Philip Brown set up Echo Logik Records, their first promo was "Bokadilo". Other songs, released on 12-inch, included "Mustn't Grumble" and their best-known, "Rollercoaster". After a year on Echo Logik they signed to the record label deConstruction. They insisted on a female singer and they recruited former Xpansions frontwoman Sally Ann Marsh, and after some disappointing songs such as "Let It Slide" (Rowlands would later describe it as "a stinker"), the band fell apart. One of the last things Ariel did was the song "T Baby", which was remixed by the pair.

Rowlands and Simons started to DJ at a club called Naked Under Leather in the back of a pub in 1992, under the alias, the 237 Turbo Nutters (named after the number of their house on Dickenson Road in Manchester and a reference to their Blackburn raving days). The pair would play hip hop, techno, and house. The two called themselves the Dust Brothers after the US production duo, famous for their work with the Beastie Boys. After a while, Rowlands and Simons began to run out of suitable instrumental hip hop tracks to use, so they started to make their own. Using a Hitachi hi-fi system, an Atari ST, a sampler, and a keyboard, they recorded "Song to the Siren", which sampled This Mortal Coil. "Song to the Siren" was released on their own record label, which they called Diamond Records (after Ed's nickname). At this point the Dust Brothers were the first-ever backroom DJs in the Sumptuous Locarno Lounge at The Job Club in Gossips night club in Dean Street, Soho from April 1992 till April 1993.

In October 1992, they pressed 500 white-label copies and took them to dance-record shops around London, but all refused to play it, saying it was too slow (the track played at 111 BPM). They sent a copy to London DJ Andrew Weatherall, who made it a permanent fixture in his DJ sets. In May 1993, Junior Boy's Own released "Song to the Siren".

Around June 1993, the Dust Brothers recorded their first remixes. The first was "Packet of Peace" for Justin Robertson's Lionrock group, followed by songs from Leftfield, Republica, and the Sandals. Later in 1993, Rowlands and Simons completed work on their '' Fourteenth Century Sky'' EP, released in January 1994. It contained the groundbreaking "Chemical Beats", which epitomised the duo's genre-defining big beat sound. The EP also contained "One Too Many Mornings", which for the first time showed their less intense, more chilled-out side. Both "One Too Many Mornings" and "Chemical Beats" would later appear on their debut album. ''Fourteenth Century Sky'' was followed later in 1994 by the '' My Mercury Mouth EP''. "Chemical Beats" was also part of the soundtrack for the first edition of the '' Wipeout'' video game series, having been featured in ''Wipeout'' for the PlayStation in 1995.

In October 1994, the Dust Brothers became resident DJs at the small but influential Heavenly Sunday Social Club at the Albany pub in London's Great Portland Street. Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, James Dean Bradfield, and Tim Burgess were regular visitors. The Dust Brothers were subsequently asked to remix tracks by Manic Street Preachers and the Charlatans, plus Primal Scream's "Jailbird" and the Prodigy's " Voodoo People". These two remixes received television exposure, being playlisted by MTV Europe's "The Party Zone" in 1995.

Early in 1994, the Dust Brothers were approached in the club one Sunday by Gallagher from Oasis, who were becoming one of the most prominent guitar bands in Britain. Gallagher told the duo that he had a Balearic-inspired track he had written that he would like them to remix. However, over time, Gallagher changed his mind, and in the end the Brothers did not remix it.

In March 1995, the Dust Brothers began their first international tour, which included the United States – where they played with Orbital and Underworld – then a series of European festivals. Also around this time, objections were filed by the original Dust Brothers over the use of their name, and so Rowlands and Simons had to decide on a new name. They decided to call themselves the Chemical Brothers after "Chemical Beats".

In June 1995, they released their fourth single, the first under their new identity. "Leave Home" was released on Junior Boy's Own, as a preview of the imminent debut album and became the band's first chart hit, peaking at No. 17.

1995–1998: ''Exit Planet Dust'' and ''Dig Your Own Hole''

In July 1995, the Chemical Brothers released their debut album ''Exit Planet Dust'' (the title inspired by their name change) on Freestyle Dust/Junior Boy's Own. It entered the UK charts at No. 9 and featured guest vocalist Beth Orton on the song "Alive Alone". It eventually went on to sell over a million copies worldwide, and was used on the soundtrack of the science fiction TV series pilot ''Virtuality''. Shortly after its release, the Chemical Brothers signed to Virgin Records, to which they took their own offshoot label, Freestyle Dust. For their next single, " Life Is Sweet", released in September 1995, they again used a guest vocalist, featuring their friend Tim Burgess, singer of the Charlatans. It reached No. 25 in the UK Singles Chart. The single was also ''Select'' magazine's "Single of the Month" for October. The release included a Daft Punk remix of "Life Is Sweet".

In October 1995, the duo returned to the Heavenly Sunday Social for a second and final run of DJ dates. They then became residents of Heavenly Social on Saturdays at Turnmills and also in Liquid Rooms in Tokyo. In November, the Chemical Brothers played the Astoria Theatre in London. The duo also supported The Prodigy in December on dates at Brixton Academy and in Blackpool.

In January 1996, ''Exit Planet Dust'' was certified gold. The Chemical Brothers released their first new material in six months on Virgin, the ''Loops of Fury'' EP. The four-track release was limited to 20,000 copies, but is now available for digital download. It entered the UK charts at No. 13. ''NME'' described the lead track as "splashing waves of synths across hard-hitting beats". The EP also contained a Dave Clarke remix of "Chemical Beats", and two other new tracks, "Get Up on It Like This" and "(The Best Part Of) Breaking Up".

In February 1996, ''Select'' magazine published a list of the 100 best albums of the 1990s thus far. ''Exit Planet Dust'' was listed at Number 39. In August 1996, the Chemical Brothers supported Oasis at Knebworth, where 125,000 people attended each of the two shows.

During the 1995 Glastonbury Festival, Rowlands and Simons had another conversation with Noel Gallagher. Gallagher told them how much he liked ''Exit Planet Dust'', and asked if he could sing on a future track, similar to the way Tim Burgess had worked on "Life Is Sweet". They did not think much of the offer at the time, given how busy Gallagher would be with the release of Oasis' ''(What's the Story) Morning Glory?'', plus the complexities of dealing with each other's record companies. However, the duo later worked on a track they thought would benefit from a vocal. They sent Gallagher a tape of what they had done so far. He worked on it overnight, and left a message early next morning that he was ready to record it. The track was called " Setting Sun" and was finally released in October 1996. It entered the UK charts at the top, giving the duo their first ever Number One single. "Setting Sun" was backed by a longer instrumental version, and also a new track "Buzz Tracks", which was not much more than a DJ tool. The three remaining members of the Beatles' lawyers later wrote to the Chemical Brothers, mistakenly claiming they had sampled "Tomorrow Never Knows". Virgin Records hired a musicologist to prove they did not sample the song.

In 1996, '' Live at the Social Volume 1'' was released by Heavenly Records, which became the Chemical Brothers' first mix CD (excluding ''Xmas Dust Up'', a free album that came in a 1994 issue of ''NME''). It was also the duo's first live album (excluding the EP ''Live 05'').

In March 1997, the Chemical Brothers released the second track from their forthcoming album. "Block Rockin' Beats" went straight to No. 1 in the UK, possibly thanks, this time, to its Schoolly D vocal sample and re-working of the bass-line from 23 Skidoo's single "Coup". The ''NME'' named it "Single of the Week" and said: "It throbs like your head might if you had just done a length underwater in a swimming pool full of amyl." It later won them a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

In the US at this time, "Setting Sun" was sitting at Number 80 in the Billboard Top 100, after selling around 80,000 copies, an uncommon achievement for a European "dance" act. Sales from ''Exit Planet Dust'' were also around 150,000.

On 7 April 1997, the Chemical Brothers released their second album, ''Dig Your Own Hole''. It was recorded at the band's own south London studio, with the title taken from graffiti on the wall outside. The album was well received, with ''Mixmag'' rating it 10/10 and calling it "mad enough to be thrilling, slick enough for not even remotely trendy coffee tables".

During the summer of 1997, the Chemical Brothers toured extensively, particularly in the United States. In August, the Chemical Brothers achieved a rapprochement with the US Dust Brothers, and asked them to remix the forthcoming single "Elektrobank". They themselves also became highly sought-after for remixes for other artists. In September, the next single from ''Dig Your Own Hole'', "Elektrobank" was released. In November, the pair played at Dublin's Point Theatre, with support from Carl Cox. They also began a US tour in Detroit.

At the end of the year, ''Dig Your Own Hole''s final track, the nine-minute-long "The Private Psychedelic Reel", gave rise to a limited-edition mini-EP of the same name. The B-side consisted of a live version of "Setting Sun", recorded at the Lowlands Festival, Netherlands on 24 August 1997. Also in December, following four sold-out US shows, the Chemical Brothers toured the UK, concluding in a sold-out show at Brixton Academy, London.

In 1998, they concentrated more on DJing, although some remixes did see the light of day, including "I Think I'm in Love" from Spiritualized. Both a vocal remix and an instrumental remix were included in the single release. Each clocked in at over seven-and-a-half minutes. Another remix completed by the Chemical Brothers was "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp" by Mercury Rev

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