The Chemical Brothers bring more gear on stage than most of us have in our studios. Matt Cox is the man who has to make sure it all works come showtime!
by David Greeves
The Chemical Brothers have enjoyed a longevity that is rare in the world of dance music. After helping to define the ‘big beat’ sound of the early ’90s, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have given their contemporaries — few of whom are still with us — a masterclass in how to keep on keeping on. There’s no real mystery to the duo’s staying power. All it takes is a string of blockbuster studio LPs (including an unbroken sequence of five number one albums, from 1997’s Dig Your Own Hole to 2007’s We Are The Night), countless floor-filling singles and a steady stream of ground-breaking music videos, inspired collaborations and inventive remixes.
The duo’s feats as a live act have also made a huge contribution to their on-going popularity. There are few other instrumental electronic acts who could fill an arena on any continent, and, arguably, none that can work an audience of that size into quite such a frothing frenzy. The Chemical Brothers’ live show — or should that be live experience — is a full-scale assault on the senses, combining the duo’s grungy synths, vertiginous filter sweeps, sledgehammer beats and irresistible, straight-for-the-jugular hooks with the retina-melting visual spectacle of a fully synchronised video and light show.
The Chemical Brothers live at Creamfields 2011: Ed Simons (left) and Tom Rowlands are barely visible at the heart of their spectacular light show. Photo: Melmif Photos
Brothers In Arms
The Chemical Brothers don’t take the easy route when it comes to playing their music live, as evidenced by the 360-degree array of keyboards, synth modules, drum machines and effects that accompanies them on stage, with Rowlands and Simons in the centre, manipulating the controls like a pair of mad scientists. The man charged with making sure this extensive, eccentric collection of gear works without a hitch is MIDI tech and live programmer Matt Cox, who has also worked as a tech, programmer and system designer for the likes of Goldfrapp, Hot Chip, the Prodigy and the Kaiser Chiefs. Cox followed a familiar route into the music industry, even if his starting point was more unusual.
“I was a signaller in the army [responsible for radio and communications] when I was a teenager,” he says, “and I got a good background in electronics from doing that. But I was always really into electronic music. I got into techno in ’88 and was fascinated. I was going home on leave from the army and going raving, and I’d be thinking, ‘I love this record, how the hell do they make this?’ So I started buying SOS and magazines like that in the early ’90s with a view to getting into sound engineering.
“I bought myself out of the army, got onto a recording course in Manchester and got a job working in a studio, just as a tape-op and brewer-upper and all that, which is how I got a foot in the door. Through that studio I got to meet various bands in Manchester, one of which was Lionrock [the 1990s big-beat duo consisting of Justin Robertson and Roger Lyons]. After they did their first album in our studio, I ended up looking after it on the road, setting up the MIDI and the keyboards, and through that I got the Chemical Brothers job. My first tour with them was at the end of ’96 and it’s just gone from there really. I don’t do any studio stuff at all now: it’s purely looking after keyboards and programming MIDI for live acts.”
Matt Cox tunes up a Roland Jupiter 6 polysynth prior to the Creamfields show. Note the custom-made covers that keep the gear dry backstage.
Block Rocking Beats
When it comes to looking after the Chemical Brothers, Cox certainly has his hands full. The duo’s live setup includes a mind-boggling array of digital and analogue equipment, ranging from the brand-new to the practically antique, all of which needs to be kept in rock-solid sync with Mac laptops running Logic and Ableton Live. But the heart of the live show is, somewhat surprisingly, the battle-scarred Mackie 32:8 mixer that sits centre stage in front of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons.
“It’s a very spontaneous thing that they do live,” Matt explains. “It’s like an instrument almost, the Mackie. They throw faders up, unmute stuff — they know where everything is exactly. Some of the filters in the racks are fed off direct outs, so if one of them thinks, ‘That Electrix filter would be great across that synth,’ he can just grab the direct out jack, put it in the direct out of the synth that he wants to get at, then he’s away in the rack twiddling the filter. They’ve got so used to that interface in front of them that it’s almost second nature. They can have an idea and put it into practice in an instant.”
Most of the Chemical Brothers’ on-stage gear is housed in custom curved racks that are designed to echo the lines of their favourite Serge modular synth.
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