One of the most renowned house music collaborations, The Chemical Brothers, hail from Manchester, UK. No surprise, most of the popular house music originated in the UK, acts like: Fat Boy Slim, The Prodigy, Propellerheads, UNKLE, Massive Attack. Similarly, the many of those house music groups were also genre defining. The Chemical Brothers, made up of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, are no exception, and were at the forefront of the Big Beat in the 1990s. Big Beat hardly contains their entire musical style, however, which reaches into Trip Hop and Progressive House (which I figure covers all the rest because I fail to grasp all the subtle, to me, intricacies of different Electronica varieties).
The album, Further, was released in June 14 of 2010, so this is a little behind for a Just in... post, but I only just a few days ago realized its existence looking through the 90.5 WBER ("The only station that matters") playlists, even though I've been hearing one of the tracks "Swoon" being played on that station. Each track seems to flow very nicely into the next, without definite conclusion. There are also two iTunes exclusive tracks, the last two. Interestingly enough, though the last 5 releases have charted #1 in the UK, this album is not allowed to be put on the UK charts, because every form of release offers a chance to win a free iPad; apparently the UK charts does not allow prizes to be offered as incentive for purchasing albums. You'd think that with The Chemical Brother's prior history, it would not matter, so we can safely say this album would also have reached #1.
Further is very instrumental, in the non-vocal sense, not in its political social or whatever else impact on the world; that has yet to be seen. Yet, if there exists any life changing messages intertwined through fabric of this music it will be hard to find. In fact, this is the first album The Chemical Brothers do not feature any vocal collaborations, leaving the job for Tom Rowlands where singing does pop up infrequently. Stephanie Dosen does also sing add her ethereal pipes to the first track I believe and "Another World", a singer known for her collaboration with Massive Attack on Heligoland (2010) and perhaps previous songs of The Chemical Brothers, I'm not sure but don't believe so.
The complete, with bonus tracks, listing is: (1) Snow (2) Escape Velocity (3) Another World (4) Dissolve (5) Horse Power (6) Swoon (7) K+D+B (8) Wonders of the Deep (9) Don't Think (10) Pourquoi
The first 8 tracks are apparently accompanied by a corresponding film by Adam Smith and Marcus Lyal. And some portions of the music videos for this album include underwater portions, done by English actress and model Romola Garai (notable for her roles in several BBC versions classic literature), who also starred in each of the films. I have uploaded the track "Another World" for your enjoyment and education into the MixPod player.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
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Listen to the entire album here:
http://www.myspace.com/thechemicalbrothers/music/albums/further-16084503
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