ah it sounded awesome - loads of reviews and feedback in this thread:

http://www.thechemic...e=5&replies=166

:)

it looked sweet, wish i was there

jeanie it was you at the after party cant believe i didnt realise on the night a wee bit trolleyed me thinks . it was a pleasure to meet you anyway .you even told me your name if you remember but the blonde dreads thru me ,well thats my excuse anyhow .....ps you looked great by the way!!!!

Hahahaha its okay Mushy! Dont worry!

Yes youre lovely wife came up to me and said "You know you have a dream of what you would like to look like ?! My dream is to look like you!"

How cute is that! You guys are lovely. So nice to meet you! Big love to you both!

My photos at http://www.facebook....7e&id=537010073

Oh thanks! That last one from the sunshine undergound looks AMAZING!

Well I thought I better get round to writing my review. What can I say about the night that hasn’t already said? I dunno, but I’ll just try and put my spin it.

Thursday night seems to have taken ages to come around, we first heard about this night mid-march. I’ve not seen the chemical brothers as much as I’m used to since the end of 2005, just a couple of dj sets. And I’m still yet to hear the new album, I’m a bit outta the loop with all the new material. So I reckon I was more keen for this show than I have been for some years, I’m ready to do it again!

So I headed up to North London from sunny Yateley, with my girlfriend, who has never seen the chemical brothers live, poor lass. I hadn’t sign myself up to pre gig drinkies with the forum members cos time wasn’t on my side. As soon as I drive into west London I hit the traffic, I hate queuing in traffic jams, and it’s such a pointless waste of my time on this planet. It doesn’t do the stress levels any good and my mood was beginning to sink/stink. I eventually park the car and get to the Roundhouse at 8.45 needing a drink, and to wind down and relax before the brothers took to the stage. I also hook up with my mate bee-dee who has become a veteran of the brothers gigs.

So this is where the fun begins! We head to the box office to collect the tickets. We walking in to the sound of sirens, but this aint the chemical brothers dropping the song to the siren! But everything’s cool init cos everyone, staff, punters and security are going about their business, nothing abnormal is going off apart from the siren. Just as we near the front of the box office, the evacuation of the building is called! We are gonna be in for an interesting night here. So we are put out onto the street, where we stay for well over an hour. Still we get to study the beautiful Roundhouse building! I gotta say I was so keen to come to the Roundhouse, a venue with a fine musical history with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd playing there. More recently I watched on telly Kasabian perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra on the Electric Proms, and the venue looked awesome. It looked a lot better than the derelict building it used to be when I’d drive past going the wrong way home from Camden many years ago! So half an hour passes and the fire brigade turn up to a rapturous applause from the crowd. They go in spend 20 minutes and leave. Times ticking on and not much happened. We are beginning to think is this gig gonna happen, will it get cancelled? Eventually the Roundhouse staff goes back in, so it looks like the gigs going on. Then the staff come back out again. The crowd are getting a bit pissed off now, there is a lot of booing and the vibe of the night is going tits up. The word ‘farce’ is being banded around by many members of the crowd. Eventually we are all let in, the entrance stormed, no ones ticket is checked, it was a free for all. A note to the Roundhouse staff; your lack of communication was pathetic, and your inability to deal with the situation just made a bad situation worse. But respect to the guy from showsec security who managed to deal with peoples questions , calm the crowd down and made sure people safety was looked after. The only person working for the Roundhouse on the night who earned his money.

So the show is on, we all make ourselves comfortable, I go down the front to see if I can spot any forum members. I bump into rich/acidchildren who was on his own when I saw him, he said the other members we around. I reckon they must have seen me coming and done a runner! I took a good look at the stage. You can tell the brothers have really put effort into this new live show. There was a whole new studio console on stage. I think the old spaceship hub must have been put into retirement now, it certainly racked up its airmiles over the years. The new console comprised of 3 big rack mount units holding all the synths and bits’n’bobs, plus a new mounting for the mixing desk. All decorated in bold pristine chome fixings. I should have really taken a photo of it all, but as I didn’t think of it. Time to get a beer, while im waiting I get a text from rich saying he spoke to Nathan Detroit and the Chems are hitting the stage at 10.30, nice just enough time to find a good spot to watch the show, I plumped for a spot next to the rear of house production suite.

The Chems come on to ‘No Path To Follow’, the crowd go mental, cos tonight is really gonna happen. Then the sound system gets cranked right up as ‘Galvanize’ start up. I must admit I thought ‘Galvanize’ never lived up to its live potential on the ‘Push The Button’ tour. But ya know what as an opening track, it really made a lot of sense, it got the crowd jumping. The new visuals perfectly synced up to the music were devastatingly good. The new curtain of lights, so bright and rich with colour just made the audio visual feast a sight to behold. I love the fact that the band were again silhouetted by there visuals like on the come with us tour, I always said that was a good look!! Burst Generator, I recognised this tune from a youtube video of the midnight tune from turnmills New Years Eve party, as well as one of their first tracks they dropped at Fabric a few weeks back. A massive energy to this tune, I must admit you could be forgive for thinking this was an Underworld tune in places, mixed with the euphoria of the Sabres of Paradises’ ‘Smokebelch II’. It’s a beautiful work of art. The visuals were great to giving the curtain a primary colour work out. Then came something more familiar to me, ‘Do It Again’. An evil twisted version I love the way the Chems rework their tracks live, make them work in a way that it wouldn’t work as a domestic recording. I think a live recording of this track should appear on a future b-side. Then we get the ‘Get Yourself High’ clown, just repeating over and over the vocal loop. I don’t know if this is genius, or an over indulgence in knowing we love them clowns, but I was uber cool! ‘Hey Boy, Hey Girl’, back in the mid set, sounded reworked with extra flanges and filters, the new visuals going full pelt. I guess I can’t comment on every tune so I skip to the Out Of Control / It Doesn’t Matter / Don’t Fight It feel It / Open Up mash-up, the tune of the night!!! I have loved hearing this in their current dj sets, everything a bootleg record should be. I never expected this to make it to their live show but I’m so glad it has, it fuckin rocks the house! For Christ sake get this tune released! I know Tom and Ed would describe their bootleg tracks as ‘for the moment’ but come on your friends with Bobby and the crew, sort the paper work out and get this track out as a b-side! ‘Saturate’ didn’t fail to deliver as a live track. I loved the visuals, the ball tracing round the screen like the old bat and ball on the Atari 2600 (I’m showing my age there). Then the paint explosions a-la Sony Bravia adverts. But sonically speaking this is such a huge track! The main set closed with ‘Chemical Beats’ was probably the biggest tune of the night as far as the crowd we concerned! Fuckin hell this tune is 13 years old but I never tier of it, fuckin excellent acid house. I’m sad that now only one track from ‘Exit Planet Dust’ makes it into the current live show, but what a killer track that can still tear the floor up!

Before the encore starts it seems a lot of people make their exit from the Roundhouse. They must know the set not finished, the lights haven’t gone back on. Or maybe it’s just the case that the show is so overrun people have got to make their way home before the tube closes down for the night, seems a shame to bail out early though. Rich walks past, so I greet him again and he joins me for the encore. We enthuse together about how good the show has been so far, how it has exceeded our expectations, how stunning the visual been and how this could be one of the greatest chemical brothers shows we may have witnessed.

The show closes with ‘The Sunshine Underground’, I’m filled with mixed emotions, I so happy to hear this song again in the live arena, but I feel sentimentally attached to ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’, I know its been the grand closer for the last 10 years and its probably right to rest the tune temporarily, but I don’t know, I just love it so much. I personally would have traded ‘Surface To Air’ spot for ‘The Sunshine Underground’ and kept the Reel for the end, but that’s just my point of view.

So the Chems came to London with something special up their sleeves. And all the events at the beginning of the evening felt irrelevant by the end of the night. The Chemical Brothers magic was far stronger than any venue fuck up. I went home thinking they had reinvented the wheel. They have put a lot of work into this live show and I don’t think anyone could argue that. They have taken the live set and totally reprogrammed it. Ever since the ‘Surrender’ show it could be argued they have used the same set core and added or subtracted bits to it. But Thursday night was a fresh new approach to the live show. I can’t wait for the next show, by Friday I was totally buzzing about what I had witnessed the following night, I spent all day with a big grin on my face, I was in full chemical afterglow. I bored my friends down the pub with my stories of this great show I saw. It’s now Sunday night and now I feel more like I have withdrawal symptoms. I need another gig, don’t know if I can hold out till the battle of Trafalgar. I’m sorry I didn’t manage to hook up with all the other forum folk, but there is always next time!

Thanks Tom and Ed, you still put on the most amazing show on earth!

Don't forget to check my chems fotos on flickr http://www.flickr.co...os/8032582@N06/

Excellent review sneaks! 8)

Thank you thank you sneakerbeater! You always write such great reviews and I was looking forward to your Roundhouse write-up!

Sneaks! I could hug you right now! Not only do i have strong competition in the long reviews departement , also it's a wonderfull review and u put in words exactly what i also feel.

They put on the most wonderfull show ever and everytime i think they simply cannot make it better , they do!

I'm glad you enjoyed it , i wish i could have enjoyed it next to you , but i probably wouldve freaked you out ;)

This is so beautiful people. This is the reason why were are all on this board. The overwhelming power of music!

Anyone got some good video clips of the Roundhouse gigs? Preferably of decent quality like the ones of Rebelbass from Tilberg

my contribution at http://www.youtube.c...h?v=X5o8mC1-PVo

Oh awesome :D Love that moment when u see all the hands in the air :D

Hey great review sneakerbeater! We'll have to catch up at Trafalgar Square. The roundhouse gig was amazing.

Sneaks, I just love your Flickr album.

Thanks for the awesome, awesome photos.

::kudos for Sneakerbeater::

i love these photos, they make me even more sad that i can't get to a gig for a while...

nice one rizzo man!! really brought it back for those few minutes like some kind of mad flashback !really brought a smile to my face!!love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i found a review of the roundhouse on the times web site. not quite as good as mine!

http://entertainment...icle1877797.ece

Ah nice one!

A worry on the horizon ?! "Whether their fans stick with them past 40, though, is a worry on the horizon "

Since when does talent and creativity have anything to do with age ?!

I'll prob stick with them till they are old grandpa's :lol:

Sometimes I wonder where these music jurnos come from, they pop up and talk about bands as if they are all knowing, when they really just pick up on what other people have said or what the mainstream are saying. 'Worry on the horizon' obviously hasn't been to Fabric or Turnmills when the CB's are on IDIOT.

Rant over = )