Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Chemical Brothers
Label: Virgin Records
Release: 2012
Running time: 88:00
Rating: 3.6/5
With the arrival of the nineties and the end of the millennium creeping closer, dance culture peaked in a whole swarm of names like The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Chemical Method, Massive Attack and Tricky, and part of this mostly British constellation of sensations, quite rightly, are Chemical Brothers. Twenty years of making music has woven tight bonds between the musical gurus and standard-bearers of electronic psychedelia, Tom Rowlands among them, and that these things work better in direct live manipulation than on records is also proven by the fusion of sight and sound released in 2012, the record Don’t Think. Weighed down by the knowledge that, after seven studio outings, Chemical Brothers were for the first time pouring out, or rather documenting, their power in the form of a live record, I sat down in front of my home TV, popped the documented Fuji Rock Festival 2011 pressing into the DVD player and set out to unravel the sonic magic of this prolific musical tandem. First off, I’d like to stress that I successfully resisted binary commands to my emotions for a long time, but when the record Exit Planet Dust first slid into my ears, the debut of the Manchester creative trust that saw the light of day in 1995, I finally gave up the fight and the windmill-tilting – 10 years after the first big reveal – and let the sounds of unorthodox, addictive hypnoticism and sonic deception rub into my pores too. On first listen Chemical Brothers proved themselves masters of the genre, but I find it hard to take everything on offer as pure gold, so this cross-section of 21 years of work was quite hefty and by no means an easy thing to digest.
First, it’s worth pointing out that live records, compared with the flood of such rock releases that marked mostly the eighties and also the nineties of the last century, are more the exception than the rule, so the wizards of electronica deserve praise right off the bat for their guts and their own kind of pioneering. True, a year earlier The Prodigy committed something similar with the record World’s On Fire, but let’s not mix apples and oranges. If The Prodigy managed to convey a feeling of naturalness with their electro punk and decadence, Chemical Brothers are still a much more danceable product, and dance records can be damn boring to take in all in one go. Don’t Think is exactly that: a projectile launched on an 88-minute ride along the waves of a musical sine curve of creative mass deception, and in the play of sound frequencies and light the spell is aimed purely at the rhetoric of music – no linking lyrics, no user manual. The Japanese breathe air saturated with electronics, and Fuji Rock Festival, beneath the sacred mountain of Zen, bushido and faith in sonic minimalism, was also steeped in postmodern psychedelia. The land of the rising sun was thus the perfect podium for a musical trip into the unknown, which kicks off with a reinterpretation of the Beatles track Tomorrow Never knows, reworked beyond recognition by DJ Junior Parker. The curtains rise, but instead of fabric the stage is bathed in rich rings of light, shades of the green and red spectrum, and Rowlands and Simons take the stage. The journey across the plains of chemical reaction begins with the record Further, and Another World is, for a rock enthusiast, something like jumping into an intergalactic pool without first checking how deep the water is. Psychogenic substances are a must here, and after a tastefully inserted sample of the track Santa Fe, a stampede of ever-intensifying surrender to rhythm begins. Since after a few attempts to give myself over completely to the sound I gave up on diving into the bare sonic picture, I left the paths open mainly to the visual channels, which are essential to the whole thing, because otherwise the full picture of the essence is rather impoverished and thin. With no visible dividing line Chemical Brothers oscillate into the track Do It Again and a quantum leap to 2006, and the record We Are Night can carry on. The repetitive patterns force you to sway, and the hypnotic call of »Do it again« plus a Mastercard-style duo of a blue and a red dancer on the screen move the whole thing into a new dimension.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ2nYY-6p_0
Meanwhile a demonic clown sneaks in among the apparitions, urging dancers, listeners and onlookers to hit it and rise to a higher dimension of perception. Phobias are a common feature of the society we live in, and besides clowns, the neighing of horses and the track Horse Power creep into the picture. The cold touch of the silvery chill of the record Further returns to the roots and to the superb record Exit Planet Dust. Chemical Beats are an overture to a psychogenic world of shadows and dim light, while the rhythm that enchants the sea of people never lets up. The superb picture and footage of the crowd of Japanese dancers in delirium, along with extremely obscure, rare shots of the evening’s orators, make for an excellent document of a moment that comes closest to group prayer. Chemical Brothers jump from their first record to their latest in a single instant. Swoon is superb proof that the beginning can meet the end again, and that long years of sonic evolution lose neither meaning nor edge. Star Guitar touches on the record Come With Us for the first time, and the quiet invitation to a mass orgasm feels artificial, more like virtual sex than juicy penetration, but it still works. The big beat flyover of an emptied sky is meant to pave the way to emotional calm, and all of a sudden I catch myself realizing the endorphins have played tricks on my mind too, so I almost miss the entry into a primordial state of rawness with the track Three Little Birdies Down Beats. Boundaries are dissolved and everything is allowed, and when luminous bodies of astral swimmers float over the audience, touching the crowd, the illusion of carefreeness is complete. The many-thousand-headed crowd stretches out its hands, trying to make sure the Creator himself hasn’t reached down a gigantic finger to them, and in the sea of lights the sense of time and physicality melts away, until the audience finally gets the first massive MTV hit in fully commanding form – Hey Boy, Hey Girl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXRy7f5yT5s
Surrender was a record that broke away from the organic feel for a moment and handed the stage to cold electronics, but with the visual imperative Don’t Think from the current latest record it’s clear that everything Chemical Brothers cook up is deliberate and damn well thought out, yet still so impressively light in its intuitiveness. The rest unfolds at the same pace, and individual tracks become merely a frame for playing with limitless ideas, while in the mirrored reflections of individual fragments happiness intertwines with dark foreboding, phobias and the genius manipulativeness of the dual-core brain trust going by the name Chemical Brothers. Setting Sun ingeniously weaves into the whole a story about a bewildered Japanese dancer who struggles to climb the red hellish ladder out of the depths of a hellish trip, but is doomed to fail. Strobes flash red and, resigned to fate, all you can do is dance to the track It Doesn’t Matter, while I experience a dark revelation with the superb track Saturate, which weaves in lovely shades of the excellent record We Are The Night. I’m no expert and don’t want to be, but it’s enough that all it takes is an open mind, an open heart and some courage, and the road to the center of the British duo’s universe is something beautiful. Balloons flutter over the crowd and Believe serves up somewhat lighter shades of sound, freed of the thick bass. Explosions of multiple audio-visual orgasms come one after another with the destructive force of a tsunami, and the suspense peaks with the first pause before the track Escape Velocity. The excursion through the scenery as seen by our wasted dancer is like the flashes of a person in a state of disconnect, close to slipping into a terrifying world of horror clowns and the demonic whisper of darkness, which is drowned out by the positive golden sound of The Golden Path. The images of Ibiza are this time moved beneath sacred Mount Fuji, and after Galvanize, the second big hit from the British masters of knob-twiddling, it’s time for nothing but the grand finale. Which track could be more fitting than Block Rockin’ Beats? I couldn’t think of a better ending, and with it this nearly hour-and-a-half trip into a world of electro intoxication, stuffed with steroids, closes in a perfect circle of superb escapism, dancing robots and suppressed fears.
Don’t Think is a kaleidoscopic snapshot of genesis, in which Chemical Brothers, with their two-decade saga, become a tandem able to conquer club podiums and festival expanses alike, without compromising a single gram of their unruly soul. The next step can only be rising above Earth’s atmosphere, and the 40th anniversary could only be celebrated on the silvery surface of our nearest natural satellite – the Moon. Saturn’s rings would also be a fitting place to switch off, and Chemical Brothers would surely survive even the Sun’s heat eruptions. The genie is out of the bottle, but it has to be admitted – the Chemical Brothers oratorio only works in consistent symbiosis of color, light and sound. Robbed of the visuals, you could take in what’s on offer only in a diminished and much blander form. Instead of a full meal you’d be eating only the hard crust of excellent bread and sipping flavorless water, which you can survive on, sure, but you could hardly call it a perfect gastronomic pleasure …
Lineup
Ed Simons – mixers, keyboards, oscillators
Tom Rowlands – mixers, keyboards, oscillators
Production
Tom Rowlands, Ed Simmons, Robert Linney, Nick Dewey, Tony Crean, Svana Gisla & Stefan Demetriou
Track list
DVD:
1. Intro (Tomorrow Never Knows)
2. Another World
3. Do It Again
4. Get Yourself High
5. Horse Power
6. Chemical Beats
7. Swoon
8. Star Guitar
9. Three Little Birdies Down Beats
10. Hey Girl, Hey Boy
11. Don’t Think
12. Out Of Control
13. Setting Sun
14. It Doesn’t Matter
15. Saturate
16. Believe
17. Escape Velocity / The Golden Path
18. Superflash
19. Leave Home / Galvanize
20. Block Rockin’ Beats
CD:
1. Another World / Do It Again / Get Yourself High
2. Horse Power / Chemical Beats
3. Swoon / Star Guitar
4. Three Little Birdies Down Beats / Hey Girl, Hey Boy
5. Don’t Think / Out Of Control / Setting Sun
6. Saturate
7. Believe
8. Escape Velocity / The Golden Path
9. Superflash
10. Leave Home / Galvanize
11. Block Rockin’ Beats
