THE Chemical Brothers are one of dance music’s great ambassadors.

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have been together since their Manchester student days. They have survived Madchester and Britpop and remain a force, still pushing the boundaries.

Their sixth album, We Are The Night, is a psychedelic, multi-layered sonic experience like nothing they’ve done before, collaborations include Klaxons, Willy Mason, Ali Love and former Pharcyde rapper Fatlip.

Here Ed Simons talks to JACQUI SWIFT about their new direction, sampling Bill Bissett and dancing salmon.

THIS album has a distinctive change in style, what influenced it?

Six albums in we still want to make music that excites us. We do that by being in a studio every day pretty much for two years and going back and forth with the music.

You have different and interesting collaborations on this album such as Midlake and Fatlip.

Yes, I think it’s cool you can have an album with Midlake, Fatlip from The Pharcyde and Willy Mason.

New album ... We Are The Night

Because we’re producing it, we wrote the original music that those people go off and work with themselves. It’s a broad spectrum of people but they work together on one album for that moment.

This is more a complete album for you rather than one known just for its singles, like in the past. Do you agree?

Yes, I think now people listen to music differently now. Before it was the 12-inch mix of this or that, now it’s more interesting to put these hours of music together. This album works as good as any we’ve done, if not better.

The title track We Are The Night features a sample from Canadian beat poet Bill Bissett. How did that happen?

In 1999 we played in this anarchist squat in Geneva. It was a mad place and we were thinking about the music that would have been played there in the Seventies and tried to make an update of that kind of music.

So there’s a bit of Kraut-rock and that incessantness with our out-there electronics on it. Then the sample of Bill’s voice came along a bit later and gave it a bit of character. And we just loved the lines We Are The Night. We have never met him but he was really excited about the music when we sent it him.

You and Tom were inseparable. Now you’re older with your own families and live in different parts of the country. How has your working relationship changed?

We used to live very intensely out of each other’s pockets. Tom’s got a family, he lives outside London but we find a way to make it work. I go down there maybe three days a week when we’re working.

He has a beautiful studio at his house. Anything can work if you still have the urge to make music together.

Klaxons feature on the track All Rights Reserved. You must be a fan?

Yes, I think they’re a brilliant band and that collaboration is a powerful piece of music. I found the most exciting thing about the Klaxons was their words.

They are pretty intelligent and they have urgency to their lyrics. We thought they’d add something to what we do and had read they were fans of ours. It’s good to have an organic reason to work together.

Which is the most fulfilling track on this album?

I think the Midlake track, The Pills Won’t Help You Now, features our best lyrics. It’s very moving and powerful. We’ve had big album closers before but never one as emotional.

And what’s the Salmon Dance with Fatlip all about?

We had this quirky bit of music which we used to call the cartoon song. We loved the humour and imagination of The Pharcyde and never guessed he would come back with this educational rap about a salmon.

The album’s artwork was delayed and your gig at the Roundhouse was delayed by 90 minutes by a fire alarm. Ever think this album was jinxed?

It’s been quite fraught. The Roundhouse looked like Big Brother eviction night outside while the artwork was a throwback to excessive music days. I think New Order had to delay some releases because of artwork, so we belong to quite a good tradition.

You have a special free gig coming up in September.

We’re playing in Trafalgar Square to 9,000 people on September 9. It’s part of Beck’s Fusions with some visual artists we work with. It’s a good one for my mum to come to!

interview with irish times

Our chemical romance

Chemical Brothers Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands have outlasted the dance-music scene that spawned them. Simons tells Jim Carroll why the chemistry is still there

BACK when Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands were medieval history students at Manchester University, longevity in dance music was about months rather than years. When they released their debut single, Song to the Siren, in 1992, they hoped it would lead to a few more DJ-ing gigs or, maybe some remix jobs.

An eventful 15 years and 10 million album sales later, Simons is on the promotional trail yet again, this time to sell the duo's sixth album. As with the previous five, We Are the Night is choc-a-bloc with collaborators; the roll-call this time includes Pharcyde rapper Fatlip, nu-rave kingpins Klaxons, Austin band Midlake and singer-songwriter Willy Mason.

The album also reiterates the Chemical Brothers's position as dance music's great survivors. After all, such mid-1990s peers as Underworld, Leftfield, Prodigy and Orbital have either failed to last the distance or seen their stature diminish greatly.

"We've never regarded it as a competition or the survival of the fittest," says Simons. "When you talk about the bands that we were in tandem with when we started out, all the people involved in those different set-ups are still happily making music even if they're in different situations.

"Underworld are involved in a lot of web-based stuff and I think they are as happy now as when they were signed to a big major label. I bumped into Liam Howlett the other day because he has a studio round the corner from where I live and he's busy writing another Prodigy album. We took a certain route and so did they."

These days, the Chemicals have a whole new set of peers (including, ironically, two other ex-Manchester University students in Simian Mobile Disco) and the presence of such young bucks as the Klaxons on their album shows an astute, if subtle, courting of the new school.

Simons points out that they've always worked with new acts. "I suppose people associate us with the more iconic and established artists like Noel Gallagher, Flaming Lips and Bernard Sumner who we've worked with. But we've also worked with people who are just starting out. It's exciting to work with them and it freshens things up. It would be very restrictive if we just confined ourselves to working with people we've come up with.

"Going back to when we made our first record, that's how we hooked up with Beth Orton. She was just starting out when we met her after I moved into her old flat. It has been a constant thread to work with new acts, the likes of Bloc Party and Magic Numbers or, on this record, Midlake. Then there's the Klaxons, who are making music that we like and we thought there was a spark there to make it worthwhile to go into a studio with them and see what happened."

It will be interesting to see if the Klaxons themselves have the longevity of the Chemical Brothers. Simons attributes professional survival to a continued satisfaction with their working relationship.

"I still love the records we made during the 1990s, but we made them in very different circumstances. The relationship between us was much more intense then, and we were together every day for about six years in some form or other.

"As you get older, your life gets different and you do drift apart. I live in London now and Tom lives in the country. But when we come together, that intensity in the working relationship comes back to the fore."

It might also explain why neither one has ever gone solo.

"The music we do as the Chemical Brothers is fairly broad-reaching and there's room for everything there. We have never limited ourselves to certain styles of music. So you don't have two people who are frustrated by what they're doing, as you might have in some bands where members go solo.

"One day, I'm sure we'll work apart, but I think we've made our best music over the last four or five years and that's pretty unusual for a band who've been together for so long."

We Are The Night is released today on Virgin Records. Chemical Brothers play the Electric Picnic on September 1st

I feel dirty even reading an interview from the Sun but good posts, Thomas. Thanks.

Keep that in mind, Ed's mum might be at the Trafalgar Square gig...

Nice work Irish, those were some good interviews

I hope that:

"One day, I'm sure we'll work apart, but I think we've made our best music over the last four or five years and that's pretty unusual for a band who've been together for so long."

will not happen that fast!!! I want to see them more than just 4 times in my life! So please, don't think about it.

Thanks Irish, very good find!

I enjoyed these articles this morning with my morning cuppa coffee - so well done Sherlock irishfan for digging these up.

Ed bringing his mother to the show. Awww! What a good boy he turned out to be. ;)

Cool stuff. Made my day!