Subject: Interview with The Chemical Brothers
Title: Without the hype: The Chemical Brothers Connect with the Dancefloor Mainstream
Byline: By Brian O' Connor
Published: February 2002 by DJ Times Magazine
Don?t blame Tom and Ed. Blame an American public that preferred their hip hop chrome-polished, their boy bands neatly coifed, and their arena-sized block rockin? beats from Limp Bizkit, not The Chemical Brothers (which reminds me of something my father once told me, ?Son, the mosh pit will always trump the dancefloor.? How right he was.)
But aaah, when Dig Your Own Hole burrowed itself into modern rock radio playlists back in 1997, that Golden Age of Electronica, something was happening here. Suddenly, pop music, however briefly, seemed exciting, dangerous even, and as a result everyone?including remixers, producers, DJs, and yes, even?musicians?wanted that roughed-up, grungy, processed sound of The Chemical Brothers.
And DJ equipment manufacturers complied. Yamaha?s 24/7 division included a Chemicals-inspired ?lo-fi? algorithm in its SU700 phrase sampler, while Roland?s SP-808 Groovesampler and its MC-505 Groovebox featured effects with extreme filters and distortion.
And two years later, for Surrender, rock radio eventually abandoned the Chemical Brothers. But DJs have definitely not. There are few artists who can move a dancefloor crowd into spasms of excitement, consistently; but a Chems track?big, seismic bottom, no-brainer to mix in and out?is one of them. Their latest single, ?It Began in Afrika,? from the forth-coming Come With Us (Astralwerks), raced to No. 1 on the Billboard club chart and as of this writing was speeding its way into the DJ Times Crossover 50 chart as well.
Now, four years post-Golden Age, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons can relax, sit in a downtown New York City office, bask in a world of diminished record-company expectations, promote their latest dancefloor foray, and not expect questions like, ?How does it feel to be the next big thing?? In its place, perhaps, they?ll hear, ?What does it feel like after you?re the next big thing??
The biggest thing happening to the Chemical Brothers nowadays is the new record, a two-year project that adheres to a template first ventured on their 1995 debut, Exit Planet Dust: an opening salvo of blistering beats (?Come With Us?), take it down to some classic 4/4 (?Star Guitar?), the pathos of a Beth Orton moment (?The State We?re In?), concluded by a twisting retro-psychedelic moment (?The Test?), although not in ?60s Noel Gallagher sound, but certainly in a similar ?90s Richard Ashcroft spirit. It should all be a welcome, if familiar, entry from the Chemical Brothers, who, along with Daft Punk, Armand and Crystal Method, have perhaps been better suited for the mainstream dancefloor anyway. DJ Times sat with the Brothers, and discussed life in a less pressurized environment.
DJ Times: Last time around, you guys said you started the recording process by spending time doing nothing but creating sounds, instead of songs. Was it the same this time?
Tom Rowlands: We did start out last time with sounds that didn?t have to fit in any part of songs or anything. It was just mucking around with synths and stuff. But this time, on some of the tracks we started with the notes, laying out the tunes, and the chords, and sometimes coming up with this stuff before the sounds. So it was different this time. But the way we work is never really set in stone. Some tracks just came out of us messing with beats, and others came out of us messing around with a guitar. It?s just that since we have no set way of working, we can come at it from any angle.
DJ Times: Give me an example.
Rowlands: ?Pioneer Skies? was just built from the tune. We played it on a MIDI guitar?played a Nord modular synth with a MIDI guitar?and recorded it into Logic Audio, and then built the track from that point on, really. We had the sort of basis, the chord structure, the melodic structure, and we just went where that took us, really.
Ed Simons: ?Star Guitar? was the same thing, wasn?t it? Started with a guitar part, something Tom started playing on a guitar.
Rowlands: Not using the actual sound of a guitar, but using the trigger, the synths and stuff. Simons: I think that was a Nord Lead.
DJ Times: Describe your studio, where you initially work up the tracks.
Rowlands: In the studio complex where we work, we have our own room, where we have our synths and computers and our instruments, and we record everything there to hard disk recorder and take it downstairs to a big Neve desk to mix on. The kind of stuff that?s in our room are an EMS VCS3, an ARP 2600, two Oberheim expanders, Juno 106, Jupiter 6. We?ve gotten a collection of interesting instruments, basses and amps
Simons: We?ve got an engineer, but we?re in control of the mix. But in terms of writing, Tom kind of starts the initial ball rolling.
Rowlands: The way we work is that we have a mix engineer, but we engineer our own stuff in our own room and then record it all, and then we go downstairs to a bigger studio to mix it all properly. So we do half of it?the engineering and the recording?in our room, and then we go down to the big studio, and mix it in a proper room with proper monitors. We don?t really worry about the mix while we?re working.
DJ Times: Last time around, you guys had started using analog sequencing. Did you continue that on this record?
Simons: We didn?t have any of that on this album. It was just something that came along for Surrender. We used the analog sequencing on ?Music: Response.? But that?s something that didn?t rear its head this time. We?ll do it live, maybe use some analog sequencers.
Rowlands: It?s good for improvising when you play around, ?cause that?s when you can come up with new tunes that you hadn?t thought of at the beginning of the process. But this one was less about randomly generated tunes, and more about tunes that we wanted to be there from the start.
DJ Times: On this album?s opening track, ?Come With Us,? you?ve got some real compelling string, drum and synth patterns. Describe how you got those together.
Rowlands: Well, we wrote a string arpeggio on a keyboard, ran it into the computer, and we were playing around with a lot of different sounds, and we just came across that string sound, tweaked around with it and stuff. And the synth that follows out of it is the same part, but being played through a Jupiter 6, and then the Jupiter 6 is going through the new Alesis synth, the A6 Andromeda, just using the filter on that. And it was quite cool the way the string sound sort of morphs into the synth sound. We were quite pleased with that. And the drum pattern is just a mix of electronic sounds and really good snare and tom sounds that we found on a record, and then we just cut it up?
DJ Times: With ReCycle?
Rowlands: Actually, we just did it by hand this time. Sometimes, by hand you can tweak the front and you just get different feels and stuff. If you have an electronic pattern, ReCycle is good, because it?s very precise; but if you?re using more of a live sound, I think you get a better feel by hand.
DJ Times: And the vocal sample on that?
Rowlands: The vocal sample on that is pretty amazing, we were lucky to find that.
DJ Times: And can we talk about where we found that?
Rowlands: Yeah, on a record by The Evidence. I think it?s ?Evidence? by The Evidence, a strange disco record that we found that seemed to fit the mood of the track, a good start for the album.
DJ Times: Obviously, scouring for beats is a large part of what you guys do.
Simons: Yeah.
Rowlands: We?ve always been interested in buying records, because we?ve always been interested in other sounds. As a musician, it?s key to keep your ears open to other things, especially with sampling. It?s good to seek out interesting ways of doing things. We never sort of base our records around samples. There are never eight bars that the track revolves around. It?s more like we weave in samples at the top.
DJ Times: I read that you?ve spent as many as 12 hours on a drum pattern.
Rowlands: Longer than that?like 12 months. The way we work is that we have all our songs on the hard disk in the computer going ?round. We?re in and out working on stuff, for this record, for a year and a half, going back in and tweaking stuff for ages. Twelve hours in one sitting on one pattern would be a bit mad, but over the course of a year or so?
DJ Times: Let?s talk about DJing. What are some of the biggest fears?
Rowlands: I know it?s the audiophile?s dream, but I don?t like the decks that are suspended on, like, elastic bands. We?re not the smooth blend type. We?re not too good for that. And the other night we were DJing and I was speeding the tone up, hitting the pitch control and Ed had to hold the turntable.
Simons: That was good fun. We played the other day at a party and one deck was humming, and you have to keep reducing the bass, the feedback. And then one deck moves faster than the other?
Rowlands: Yeah, that happens a lot.
Simons: Don?t know why that happens.
Rowlands: Technics, especially, their sense of what is the middle, unity, the pitch, whatever, is not often the same, is it?
DJ Times: It should be calibrated.
Simons: Because we often play the same record on both decks, slightly out of phase with each other, so normally that?s quite easy, but when you have decks that are at different speeds?
DJ Times: Instead of getting that phasing effect, you might be playing the same record at the same time.
Simons: We do that quite a lot, one beat behind. Rowlands: Good monitoring is the key, though.
Simons: There was brilliant monitoring at [New York City?s] Centro-Fly the other night.
Rowlands: And it?s great when you have a nicely laid-out booth, and I also don?t like it when the booth is divorced from the dancefloor. They used to have a booth [at Centro-Fly] that was a small narrow thing where you felt very separated from the club. Now, it?s actually part of the club, so you feel like you?re part of the club. And I think the people there at Centro-Fly are a little upset that the new booth has cut into the club?s capacity, but that?s a priority. The music has to be right to begin with, to get everything else working, and I?m glad that the owners realized that.
DJ Times: Does that impact your programming?
Rowlands: Well, you can play records and get immediate feedback and you can see if people are really feeling it. And you also get this sense where you?d like to be, doing the do. And it seemed like, the feeling you get when you?re playing and you can sense that, say you have the monitors up and it?s not loud enough, [at Centro-Fly] you had the feeling that everybody was totally immersed in the sound. I could really turn it up and it wouldn?t hurt my ears. It was clear sound. It?s also the same at 1015 Folsom in San Francisco. It has a brilliant booth, it?s on the floor, and you really feel part of it.
Simons: I think they?ve been building the DJ booths a little higher up in England, so you feel like you?re worshipping the DJ sometimes.
Rowlands: And a fridge, in a booth. Simons: Yeah, so as not to drink visibly in front of the crowd.
DJ Times: What are some of the better clubs to DJ in Europe?
Simons: Fabric has one really great booth, and one that is not so good. The cool one is at the far end of the club, so you have to make a journey to get there, you go and see the people that you want to see. It?s a small, longway arch, just got wicked sound, wicked music, and we cram a lot of people in there, and it?s really good atmosphere, and people are there, and there?s not much to do other than just dance, and it?s a room that you?re crammed into.
DJ Times: And when you?re cramming these people in, are you playing them tracks from your upcoming record?
Simons: We had ?It Began In Afrika? as sort of a work in progress. We sent out a version of it early on to Sasha, and then we kind of re-jigged it after that.
DJ Times: Did Sasha not like it?
Simons: It didn?t sound quite right in the club. He played it, and we heard him play it, and he liked it, but we didn?t. We just felt we needed to change the bass drum on it. It was more that we kind of knew it wasn?t quite up, but he liked it anyway, and we thought it would be worth moving on with it.
Rowlands: Cream in Liverpool is another great one. The room that we play in, the Courtyard, is very good. It?s just that thing when you put a record on, you can feel it under your feet, that it?s a big sound. It?s upsetting when you put a record on and you have the monitor screaming, but you don?t feel that the people are getting the full weight of the sound.
DJ Times: Describe what goes into your DJ programming.
Simons: It?s not a smooth thing we do. People don?t get lost in these monotonous house-grooves. We have lots of rushy moments. We don?t watch people react to music. Other people can do that thing of a sort of slow jam, and people are in the zone and they?re not really going anywhere, and that?s cool?I like being there myself, actually. But when we DJ we?re into big peaks of excitement, a sort of a mad rush, then we?ll slow it down, and people get on a bit of a weird, dark, druggy groove, and then we?ll bring them back to a big rushy thing. And it?s not all our own records, but when we come on, we want to have a big explosion of excitement. But we?re not DJing all the time, so when we do DJ, we just want to rock the house.
DJ Times: Now that we?re a couple years removed from the ?electronica? hype, what have you guys been hearing about where you fit in current music?
Rowlands: Interest from parties outside of dance music?that has definitely decreased.
DJ Times: In terms of the your label?s expectations, have they diminished?
Rowlands: In terms of making music, that?s never in our minds, really. The one good thing about that whole ?97 thing was that back then a lot of people had their ears closed to any music apart from alternative music, or so-called rock music. Lots of people you talk to?especially in America?before that said, ? I like rock music.? And since then, ?I like different types of music.? And I think that?s cool.
DJ Times: Was it a noticeable change, in terms of the crowd? A rock crowd in a dance club will look toward the booth, as if it were a rock show.
Rowlands: We find that if you go somewhere, like Cream, or any of the big clubs, it?s like that. People face the booth, even if it?s, I don?t know, Tall Paul or someone. It?s just the culture that?s come out, isn?t it? A DJ is there to watch as well as to enjoy. Watching the DJ is not essential to the enjoyment of the evening, but it?s quite nice when you see Oakenfold has his headphones around his mouth.
Simons: And his dancing.
DJ Times: What?s the preferred mixer?
Rowlands: The one the other night [at Centro-Fly] was quite nice. I think it was a big Rane with a crossfader and faders, and a nice EQ?
Simons: We still like the crossfaders.
DJ Times: In terms of music out there, what have you guys been listening to?
Simons: I quite like what?s going on in West Coast, that tripped out long house records. I think it?s called Red Melon Records.
Rowlands: The thing I?ve been listening to most over the last year and a half is our album. I haven?t found anything that?s blown my mind, but I do hear something from time to time that I like.
DJ Times: Working on a record that long, doesn?t that fear surface when you go back to something that you haven?t touched for months, that you liked when you put it down, and you go back to it and think, ?This sucks.?
Rowlands: Yeah, but that?s part of the process of making it, isn?t it? The record doesn?t get released until we get to the point where we?ve been living with it so long, but we still get excited and intrigued by what it is. And when we reach that point, we know we?ve got something. When you put it on and it doesn?t sound labored, it still sounds fresh and fun.
DJ Times: How does the doubt creep in?
Rowlands: Well, that?s the great thing about cutting acetate and taking tracks out to the club. It?s good to know that there was something about this music that I found exciting and other people found exciting, too. That?s why DJing really helps. The music exists in real life, not just in the studio. You?re making music that means something to people, not just yourself.
DJ Times: Are you guys miking the vocals for Richard [Ashcroft] and Beth [Orton]? Rowlands: It?s pretty easy, you stand in front of the mic. For us, it?s not so much the spatial situation is so important to the sound. You choose a nice Neumann microphone. The singers that we use, especially those two, they?ve got such brilliant voices that with a bit of good quality compression and nice EQ it sounds pretty good right out of the body.
DJ Times: And you gave them the tracks and they figured the lyrics around that? Simons: Beth is actually singing some words written by Tom.
Rowlands: And Richard, when he started singing, ?Did I pass the acid test,? those words are perfect, amazing. It?s a big thing when you put so much trust in someone vocalizing with words what you?re feeling with the music. You?ll be working on the music for awhile and you?ll begin to get ideas what it?s about, then Richard got a hold of the track, went away and got inspired by it, and came back into the studio. There?s a real crunch moment when he starts singing and you think, ?Is this really what I want our music to say?? And then it was just perfect, a real inspirational moment, and it clicked. You really have to trust the people you work with. And what helps is that we really love the music that he?s made to begin with. Simons: And with Beth, it?s just great to have a friend who?s a really talented singer.
DJ Times: You guys are no longer on the Remixer Yellow Pages, are you?
Simons: Not really. Over the last year and a half or so, we?ve only done one, for Fatboy Slim, ?Song for Shelter.?
Rowlands: If something comes on that we really like, we?ll do it. But we?re quite happy dedicating all our musical energies into making our record, really. It?s nice, some remixes are fun to do, you take a week or so to do it and then it?s done.
DJ Times: Do you approach studio work like a job, 9-to-5?
Rowlands: We approach it like an 11-to-7 job, actually, with weekends off. We need to fill our days somehow. And if you enjoy going to work, it helps.
Simons: We live in South London, and it takes about a half hour drive to get to the studio.
DJ Times: So it really is like getting in a car and going to the office.
Simons: That?s right.
DJ Times: With a secretary who gets your coffee?
Simons: Uh, no.
Rowlands: That?ll be the next.
DJ Times: I don?t think Fatboy Slim gets his own coffee.
Simons: His studio?s in his own house.
DJ Times: And he?s got groupies, too. Have you guys had any Chemical Brothers groupies that you?ve had to deal with?
Simons: Not anymore.
DJ Times: What happened, she got married? Rowlands: No, he got married?to another man! [Laughs]
Copyright � 2002 DJ Times Magazine
TESTA Communications Publishing
http://www.djtimes.c...02/chemical.htm
i dont think this one was posted yet
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