Inspired by chemicalreactions hilarious japanes interview I thought it'd be cool to have a thread that unites interviews no matter whether its written, audible or visible, by the lords of electronic music.

So let me start with this one:

http://www.youtube.com/v/9O6iVkazHOo&hl=en

http://www.youtube.com/v/vMJ7ZKc09Bs&hl=en

[addiamge]http://www.nyrock.co...s99/chem_br.jpg[/addimage]

Interview from July 1999

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons met in history class at Manchester University in 1988. The two immediately got along and soon began scouting out the city’s active nightclub scene. Not content with the popular house music at the time, they began DJaying themselves. As a tribute to the American Dust Brothers, they initially called themselves Dust Brothers, but later changed the name to Chemical Brothers when the Dust Brothers threatened to sue. In 1995, the duo released their acclaimed debut, Exit Planet Dust. Two years later came Dig Your Own Hole, and now they’re back with Surrender.

NYROCK:

It's been quite a while. What have you guys been up to?

TOM:

A bit of this and a bit of that... The usual stuff, you know.

ED:

A bit of fighting, a bit of remixing, a few dramas, the usual stuff that happens when you know each other for over ten years.

NYROCK:

Ten years is a long time. Since you're still friends I guess it hasn't been too bad...

ED:

We grew up together and we need our drama, makes us work better...

TOM:

We grew up? When? I must have missed that completely. Grown up? That sounds scary. I don't want to grow up.

NYROCK:

Lets get back to the drama. Drama sounds good. What was it all about?

TOM:

We had so many ideas for this record, so many different strands and different things we wanted to do. Sometimes it was too much and we squabbled about it. Nothing really serious, more like outbursts.

ED:

Two different people, two different ideas, but that's good. It causes some friction sometimes, but that helps the creative process.

NYROCK:

I'm puzzled by how you got started? It seems like you went from DJs to stars. I imagine your original material helped a lot.

ED:

I don't really see us as stars. I still see us as DJs trying to give people a good time.

TOM:

That's the whole deal. The whole idea of being a DJ is working a club and making people dance, making people enjoy themselves and dance their bootie off. We still enjoy doing that. Putting it on an album isn't much different. We're trying to do the same stuff we do at live gigs: Giving people a good time.

ED:

Tom and I always DJ together.

TOM:

We still get our inspirations from DJaying. We get a lot of new impulses and it's a good way to check new tracks in clubs, if people like it, if it's club compatible.

ED:

Dance music is something that grips you. It forces you to dance. Resistance is futile, ha ha.

TOM:

We don't want to be rock stars and stuff. We like getting our music out; we like sharing our music; we love playing. We make these albums which can be enjoyed by a lot of people and that's great.

NYROCK:

Is it difficult working together all the time? Small wonder you have some friction...

ED:

It works for us.

TOM:

We always do it together. We don't work apart. We have one studio, one computer, one desk and all the music you hear is written between us. We're always writing and recording because we have our own studio and we go in there every day.

ED:

We work on tracks but there's an album somewhere in the back of it all.

NYROCK:

You guys won a Grammy for "Best Rock Instrumental"...

TOM:

(snorts) Best Rock Instrumental, yeah. It's kind of amazing what they come up with. Best Rock Instrumental, oh please. They really were looking hard for a label or a drawer to stick us in...

ED:

Oh well, we took the Grammy anyway, so what the hell.

NYROCK:

In the early stages of your career the Dust Brothers threatened to sue if you didn't change your name. Now they've remixed one of your tracks...

TOM:

Yeah, that was some shock. We loved them, admired them. That's why we called ourselves Dust Brothers and when they threatened to sue we were shattered.

ED:

Yes, but now that they remixed one of our tracks and we remixed one of their tracks everything is fine. It's a great compliment, after all they were our heros and our inspiration.

NYROCK:

You are pretty well known for your remixes. Have you had your eye on the scene? Anything you particularly liked?

TOM:

I quite liked the stuff the Microbots did. That really impressed me. Or the Pole album, a lot of effect with really simple methods, that's great.

ED:

The Dirt Chamber sessions are also great.

TOM:

Yes, but Liam Howlett, come on, the guy is a genius.

NYROCK:

On Surrender you worked with Noel Gallagher again. It seems like a steady collaboration between the Chemicals and Oasis...

TOM:

It's fun working with Noel, really fun. He's a good sport.

ED:

Noel's really cool. When we asked him to do it, he said yes and just came round and did it in a day.

TOM:

It was a lot of fun. We had fun and I think it comes across on the album. I think he likes it because it's so different from putting together an Oasis album. It's something else for him.

NYROCK:

You had quite a number of guest musicians, Noel, Bernard Sumner and Hope Sandoval. What was it like working with them?

TOM:

It was different with each and everyone of them, Bernard Sumner and Noel and Hope Sandoval. They are far apart from each other. But our sound is so strong and so defined that it can really take on these different things, without sounding watered down or losing it.

NYROCK:

You guys seem to be a bit nervous. Did I ask the wrong questions?

ED:

er... nope, football...

TOM:

Champions League, Man United...

source: http://www.nyrock.co...hemical_int.htm

The Chemical Brothers Talk Music Videos, David Lee Roth.

By Ryan Dombal

Blender.com, June 2007

Over the last 12 years, British dance duo the Chemical Brothers have built up a remarkably consistent music video résumé. Their strategy is simple: Get the hell out of the way. "We're not filmmakers," said Tom Rowlands in a recent interview. "A lot of bands get into the making of their videos, but we figure if we were doing a remix we wouldn't want the artist over our shoulders telling us what to do." Working with innovative video directors like Michel Gondry ("Let Forever Be"), Spike Jonze ("Elektrobank") and Dom & Nic ("The Test") doesn't hurt either. As the duo gets ready to release its sixth album, We Are the Night, in June, we took a trip down music video lane with the laid-back blokes, learning about their missed David Lee Roth opportunity and their worst video ever.

Blender: You guys usually show up in your own videos in very brief cameos, but we noticed you get some decent screen time in your first video for "Life Is Sweet."

Tom Rowlands: Yeah, it convinced us not to be in our videos.

Ed Simons: First thing in the morning when we got to that shoot we were asked to walk across a room and take our coats off and put them on a hook. That may seem easy, but it was at that moment that we realized our acting skills weren't great.

TR: We came to making music from a desire not to be the center of attention. We weren't the kind of kids who wanted to play the lead role in the school play. At the first gig we ever played everyone was looking at the stage on one end and we played on a little ledge at the back of the room.

Blender: Are there any particularly terrible video ideas you remember receiving over the years?

ES: There was this one that was in the aftermath of the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" video. Someone wanted to ape that, but with David Lee Roth walking down the street in a pink suit singing our song. It might have been pretty good, but we didn't like it. It's the video that got away.

TR: David Lee Roth is a big Chemical Brothers fan apparently.

Blender: That sounds insane. We assume Van Halen aren't as big in England as they are in the States, though ...

ES: "Jump" is pretty big at weddings.

TR: I don't really know what Eddie Van Halen looks like. I just know he used to play guitar with his teeth.

Blender: We're pretty sure he's actually lost a couple of his teeth at this point.

TR: From playing guitar with them?

Blender: Maybe. He just got out of rehab ...

TR: That might be a factor.

Blender: Which Chemical Brothers video is your favorite?

ES: "Setting Sun." It might not be the most accomplished, but I like the colors — I'm like a baby [laughs]. I think it really captures a time when dance music was associated with a bit of social unrest, and there's lots of humor in it — I like the dancing policeman. It's quite an old one now, so it's got a nostalgia value for me. That's one of our better cameos as well, we're good at pulling boxes up off the grass. I'm not completely joking, I think we were wearing good clothes.

Blender: The video for "Out of Control" features Rosario Dawson as a kind of guerrilla rebel taking on a soda company. What's going on there exactly?

ES: It's anti-corporate: Don't co-opt music and brands.

TR: Too late for that [laughs].

ES: We've passed that point now.

Blender: What commercials have you guys done?

ES: Michel Gondry did one for Air France that is as good as any of the videos we've made. He uses our track "Asleep From Day" — it's been running for like eight years now on French TV.

Blender: Are there any videos that you had made but didn't end up going with?

ES: We sold a video to another band for cheap in 2002. We can never reveal who it was, that was part of the contract. It was not a great video. We had been on a press trip in Japan and our tour manager said the video arrived and we had to watch it. He said in all the years of working with us he's never seen our faces so gloomy and in sheer disbelief.

TR: A well-respected team of directors was involved. I eventually saw it on telly a few times.

Blender: What can you tell us about the upcoming video for your new single for "Do It Again"?

ES: It's set in Morocco, two young lads somehow get a copy of the record and hilarious consequences ensue ... or not so hilarious.

TR: Sign me up for that treatment!

Blender: Anything more specific?

TR: That's pretty specific!

ES: Many great movies have been based on less ... Dude, Where's My Car?

TR: Snakes on a Plane.

source:http://www.blender.c...es.aspx?id=2682

Interview, April, 1997 by Ray Rogers

Brothers from another planet - interview with Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons of the duo Chemical Brothers

There's a good reason why the Chemical Brothers are big news in music right now: They are reinventing, reinvigorating, and reigniting the thrill of danceable pop

With the advent of a newly coined genre of music that's being called "electronica" - a hybrid of techno, dance, drum and bass, and other such computer-driven musics - debate is mounting over whether traditional raw rock is being threatened by unfeeling technology and things that go bleep in the night. But any War of the Worlds hysteria can be out on hold because of clubland's truest Innovators of sound, Britain's Chemical Brothers.

The London-based duo of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons has been an explosive force in dance music at home since 1994, when they released their debut record, Exit Planet Dust. Now they're causing a chemical reaction in America. The pair, who met while studying medieval history at university and deejaying at local clubs, are musical mixologists, blending dance-club euphoria with rock 'n' roll attitude over hip-hop beats, concocting some of the most intoxicating music around - much of it purely Instrumental. Their second album, Dig Your On Hole (Astralwerks), boasts the swirling psychedelic single "Setting Sun" (which features Noel Gallagher of Oasis on vocals) and has set off the group's most radical effect yet: torching the distinctions between styles of music. At the rats they're going, we'd say the Chemical Brathers are about to change the chemical composition of pop.

RAY ROGERS: Is it true that electronics is "the next big thing"?

ED SIMONS: We've heard this whole thing about dance music becoming the new alternative. We don't really think of music in terms of being blocks, interchanging with each other -

TOM ROWLANDS: Or replacing each other. It's just weird the way everyone talks here, like, "This is the future. You won't listen to rock records next year. You'll listen to electronic records."

RR: What you do is a mix of styles anyway.

ES: If you are trying to identify what the enemy is, obviously the enemy is having to listen to Celine Dion or really bland R&B - not those "alternative" types of music. When people talk about dance music being on a mission to take over the airwaves, that doesn't really seem right to me, either. I don't want my radio station to go all techno; that's not why I'm making music. I like good pop music, and I like good rock records.

RR: Why do you think electronic music is taking off right now?

TR: It's a reaction to the fact that over the past four years the main thing that young people have done in England is dance. That's been the main leisure pursuit for people ages sixteen to twenty-five.

ES: It's how people coexist in England, by dancing together.

RR: Since the songs you write don't use a traditional verse-and-chorus structure, where do you start?

TR: Actually, we do think in those terms. We spend a lot of time on structure to make our records a bit more pop. Our record isn't a sprawling thing.

ES: "Leave Home," which is on the first album, was described as a great pop song because it's got a moment in it when you say, "Wow, that's the moment of that record." It's like how a Beatles record has a great middle eight somewhere in it.

RR: What I mean is that the music isn't arranged around lyrics.

TR: It's not arranged around vocals. It's arranged around sounds and drums.

ES: The starting point for each track is probably a good break.

TR: "Smokin' rhythm."

ES: And then we'll just add more and more things: hooks and bits and bobs.

RR: Your albums are largely Instrumental, but your first hit here In the States, "Setting Sun," has a vocal on It. Do you think the song would have taken off so quickly if you didn't have Noel Gallagher or someone like him singing on it?

ES: Well, a lot of people still have a stumbling block with music that's instrumental. I can't think of any really big band that makes instrumental music.

TR: Mike Oldfield! [laughs]

RR: Kenny G.

TR: Kenny G, well that's more like it. But I feel that the saxophone is merely an extension of his voice.

ES: A vocal draws people in.

RR: A lot of people, over here at least, still think of electronic music as cold or unfeeling. But yours certainly isn't. What do you think connects the audience to it?

ES: Well, what we were just saying about bits of a record one can grab hold of. It isn't a relentless or repetitive trancelike state we're after. It's infused with the rock dynamic - it kind of surges.

TR: I think it's really cool and quite a feat when you can manage to get emotions out of electronics; when you have clinical and computerized music that's also really stirring. Basically, we like things to move you. If our record comes on in a club, we want people to remember it and think, "That was the one that physically did something to me."

RR: Your live shows are so powerful. What do you hope to do when you perform?

TR: When we play, we're trying to replicate that feeling of a club, of people coming for the night and getting this whole sensory experience. It's quite a '60s idea, this. We just hope people hear things they hadn't heard before and go with them. It is quite a break with the long tradition of people seeing music live. So . . . [deadpans] it's pretty important.

source:http://findarticles....v27/ai_19382616

The Chemical Brothers Interview 02.2005

http://myspacetv.com...videoid=2715635

Interview

The Chemical Brothers

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:16:17

The pioneers of Big Beat discuss their latest collaborations, festival freedom and how Americans still love those "Block Rockin' Beats"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Electronic and house music once lived on the American fringe, but the door to the mainstream was kicked open by the crossover success of The Chemical Brothers, Moby, Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy in the mid-to-late 1990s. A decade later, it seems perfectly normal to hear a Chemical Brothers song ("Galvanize") anchoring an ad campaign for Budweiser.

Earlier this year, the Brothers—Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands released We Are The Night, their eclectic sixth album that featured throwback party-starters alongside psychedelic electronica and one-off bits of weirdness like Fatlip's preposterously catchy old-school rap on "The Salmon Dance."

Simons and Rowlands hit Los Angeles to headline (along with Paul Van Dyk and Carl Cox) the city's annual Nocturnal Festival, in which glowstick boys and glitter girls frolic outdoors beneath the downtown skyline. Prior to setting off to prove the claim made by their album title, they sat down with ARTISTdirect in their bungalow at the storied Chateau Marmont to talk about their career, their range of collaborators and the recipe for a memorable festival.

When it comes time to start a new album, are you starting with a clean slate, or do you have snippets and instrumentals that you go back and revisit?

TOM ROWLANDS: There are always bits of music that haven't quite reached their full potential yet. Something like "Hey Boy, Hey Girl" was around for years in various sorts of forms until we thought we had finished it. It was the same with this record—there were a couple of tracks that were things that we had started but didn't get to a point where we were happy with it.

How do you know when an idea just isn't working and you’re going to table it forever, as opposed to archiving it so you can come back to it?

TOM ROWLANDS: Sometimes you just have an idea—you're working on something and it strikes you, "Hang on, why don't we take that bit and do something completely different?" It's like a puzzle you're trying to work out—you know there's something good in this idea, but it's not communicating. You're drawn back to those things, and when you come into the studio, the songs you load up on your computer are the ones that have that quality to them.

Is there a finite beginning to when an album "starts" and when you know it's complete?

ED SIMONS: When we actually finish an album, it can be miles away from the album we thought we were making—particularly this record. There was a whole parallel record that we were making at one stage, but it came to be how it came to be. It just depends on how you're feeling about music at that given time. The music that we were working on still exists, though, and it will live to fight another day.

In the promotional interviews that accompanied the release of the album, you were talking about "Do It Again" and how you discovered that it has this sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, depending on the setting in which it's played. Were you conscious of that dichotomy while you're putting the song together?

ED SIMONS: Say a song like "Block Rockin' Beats," which is kind of our biggest record here in America… That was a record made for us to play in nightclubs. At the time we made that, we were DJing every Saturday night in a club in London—which we've never done since or before. We had a residency at a club, and we wanted stuff to play—we were playing three hours every Saturday night. "Block Rockin' Beats" was something that was played at like four in the morning, but then it became something that can be played on KROQ. "Do It Again" is a record that's on the radio in the middle of the day and it's kind of jaunty and poppy. But we were playing the other day in Chicago and it brought out all the acidic quality to it—just being in Chicago did that. It exists in a different way. "Hey Boy, Hey Girl" is the same way. Particularly in England, these druggy club records can be on the radio in the middle of the day. That duality has always been interesting for us.

On the songs where you're feeding instrumentals to guest vocalists, how soon do you know who you're writing for?

ED SIMONS: It's very different every time. There are pieces that we feel like we want a vocal on, and then we rack our brains to think of someone. Very rarely do we approach someone and write music specifically for them. We were very keen to work with Willy Mason and Tom sent him something that he'd been working on, then [Mason] sent back a song he'd been working on. We took the song that he gave us and wrote some music back around that. But with Midlake, we sent them a pretty fully formed idea and they came back with a pretty fully formed vocal. Ali Love came in with sort of a sketch and an idea, and the three of us worked it out during the couple days he spent with us.

That's kind of our ideal collaboration—people coming in with an idea, and then the three of us—or whoever else is involved—producing and writing together. We had a great day with the Klaxons, who came in mid-tour on a Sunday, and we had a day to do it. It was great. It was fun. They didn't really have much when they came in, but by the end of the day we had this fully formed thing. They were very on it and very quick. That's the joy of collaborating. People debate how many vocalists we have and stuff like that, but it’s still fun for us to meet new people and have them in the studio. That makes for great records.

Are there songs that are obligatory in your setlists? Do you have to play "Block Rockin' Beats" when you come to the States?

TOM ROWLANDS: We haven't been playing it all summer, we didn't play it in England this whole tour. But we started playing it just before we came to America, and we play it in America—which is probably a wise thing. [laughs]

ED SIMONS: They're not quite obligatory—we feel lucky [to play them]. "Under the Influence" has pretty much been a staple, both DJing and live. It has a really amazing effect on a crowd of people. It was never a single, but it's almost the anthem of us playing live. But we're very intent on playing new tracks. A lot of it is made for playing live, it just fills a room. I think it's a trap if you've been around a long time to just rely on the old ones. We had a tour where we were playing a lot of old records, but now we kind of concentrate on the last two records.

You had another festival-heavy summer. Fans know what makes a festival work for them, but what makes it enticing for headliners?

TOM ROWLANDS: Catering. [laughs]

ED SIMONS: The scenery. Glastonbury. Coachella, as you know, is quite an amazing place to be. Some sort of spirit—a tradition, a sense of history feels good about a festival.

TOM ROWLANDS: It's best if people have to travel to it, if you have to step outside, if you have to make a commitment to go to it. There's no escape—you're here. That puts people in a different mindset. At Glastonbury, you see people step out of their normal lives and live completely differently.

There seems like there's a recurring theme with electronic artists that when the artist got into the music, it was something completely fresh—in some cases, even something illegal. But it's hard to imagine that being the case anymore. Electronic music and house music is much more a part of pop culture now. Does that automatically mean that it loses some of its luster?

ED SIMONS: There's nothing like something being new to make it good. House music has been going for 20 years, but still there's always a new set of kids coming, and it is new to them. And there's a new set of producers, and what they do feels new. In London, I think it's kind of less commercial than it was—it's kind of an underground thing again to go out and dance all night. But really, my clubbing days are pretty much over, so I'm the wrong man to talk to. But when we DJ clubs now, they're a zillion times better equipped with sound and lights. That all adds to the experience.

—Adam McKibbin

11.26.07

source:http://www.artistdir.../news/article/0,,4486360,00.html

Just been lurking and decided to log in and say "thanks" for digging these out! I like the interview directly above - I don't recall having read that one before.

Five part interview ca. june 19, 2007

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/v/XU-CQJX_TBg&hl=en

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/v/_qI_QTtfkk0&hl=en

Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/v/4SqKrh2BaAw&hl=en

Part 4

http://www.youtube.com/v/vxekL7F_DBg&hl=en

Part 5

http://www.youtube.com/v/OU4dX7HeQHo&hl=en

"'Do It Again' is a record that's on the radio in the middle of the day and it's kind of jaunty and poppy. But we were playing the other day in Chicago and it brought out all the acidic quality to it—just being in Chicago did that."

They saw me and said, "this kid wants us to bring out the dark part of Do It Again."

Wow, that's the kind if interview record keeping that Syria would be proud of...

I was looking around for interviews and found this one. Forgive me if it's been posted before but I don't recall having read this interview with Tom before:

http://www.self-titl...mical-brothers/

Enjoy!

Never read this one. The questions are actually better and not same ones in other interviews. Especially this one, which I think was a great response from the Bros..

Q: I once interviewed you guys for an Urb story surrounding the Push the Button record, and I remember you saying that you essentially gave up on the U.S. at some point, hence the rarity of your DJ appearances. Do you still feel that way? I mean, aside from that tour here last summer, we haven’t seen you guys spin here much. Is it the lack of venues? The lack of an audience? The feeling that people essentially don’t give it a shit for lack of a better term?

A: It’s great in America when you play and actually meet people who are really into it, but the hard facts of it is that there’s a whole world out there which is more switched on to electronic music at the moment. As from the start of our band, we go and play where people want to see us. Our gig is complicated and expensive to put on, so if we can play to 15,000 people in Milan on a Tuesday night as opposed to 1,500 in St. Louis then I think the decision really becomes obvious. That’s not to say it won’t change. Maybe the success of Daft Punk at Lollapalooza will persuade promoters, festival runners, etc. that two guys with some synths, computers and a light show can entertain a big crowd just as well as a traditional rock band.

Thank Whirls for the article!

"Blender: Are there any videos that you had made but didn't end up going with?

ES: We sold a video to another band for cheap in 2002. We can never reveal who it was, that was part of the contract. It was not a great video. We had been on a press trip in Japan and our tour manager said the video arrived and we had to watch it. He said in all the years of working with us he's never seen our faces so gloomy and in sheer disbelief.

TR: A well-respected team of directors was involved. I eventually saw it on telly a few times."

Anyone knows what was that video ?

Well, Come with Us came out in 2002, so it was obviously supposed to be a video for a track from the album...

Interesting.

oh yeah i remember talking about that one when star guitar came out:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=IwozrQDebUQ

"This is maddness!"

"-This is Star Guitar!"

so we know it's 2002, it's been made by a team of directors and it's probaly not closely related to the track, if another band could use it...

This could help maybe :

http://www.lar-mar-p...com/vid2002.htm

Could be this one :D

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=tD3y8RoTjSY

it was directed by Traktor ("A well-respected team of directors" ?)

bump

no one reacted to my last post. Do you think that's the video they rejected ?

I'll have to check this out when I get home from work.

wwoooow,

whose hungry?