Album Review: Chemical Brothers - Further, Stream The Entire Album Here

Call it techno. Call it club music. Call them dance tracks. There are many generic terms for the masses to tag the music of the crossover electronic artist. These lucky souls have successfully bridged the divide from their music having limited mass exposure in late night venues to alternative radio play, music video popularity, hired remix duty and, most lucrative of all, licensing to commercials and feature films. If they are truly deserving, they can stand at the top of the heap while retaining their club credibility (God bless you, Daft Punk) or, sadly, releasing unadventurous product while hoping for the public to latch onto their attempts to return to glory (I am looking at you, Moby).

For some time, The Chemical Brothers were taking that path into slowly fading obscurity, putting out uneven albums, selling their music to the first available beer maker and basically grinding their once successful formula into dust. Since no one was interested in listening to the past in electronica's ever revolving door of ready now music, Tom and Ed made the decision to embrace other influences and reinvent their sound for the fan of today.

Their new album Further is to be released June 22 on Astralwerks. The sounds of the 90's Chemical Brothers has been cherry picked or altogether flushed. Most notably, there is an absence of their signature big-name guest vocalists. Although a guarantee in record sales, it was a necessary loss for The Chemical Brothers to grow. The new influences are from the past and present here, drawing from sources such as brightly lit chamber-pop, gauzy shoegaze, arms-length ambient, and blownout electroclash. Although the album has eight tracks, the songs run overlap with only the stylistic change alerting the listener to the new track. After the joyous bleeps open up "Snow" with the thankful chorus: "Your love keeps lifting me higher", the highlight track of Further "Escape Velocity" begins sounding like the opening of a BBC documentary from the 1970's. Then beat kicks in, and it all hands in the air for about 10 minutes. My earlier review of this song had me thinking about "a remix of Boards of Canada by Underworld in their prime". Although its roots are firmly in The Chemical Brothers Big Beat past, the song is fresh, fun and undeniable.

Although the album's payoff comes early, Further still reveals nuggets of electronica gold. Muffled beats and vocals burst and twinkle on "Another World". Disco bass reign supreme on "Swoon". "Dissolve" sounds like a forgotten but worthy holdover from their classic LP Dig Your Own Hole. Even Further's most derivative track "Horse Power", with its horse whinny samples and stomping drumbeat, has its hokey charm. Where we were used to a collection of good to great songs on the best Chemical Brothers LP's, Further plays like a proper full length with crests and valleys that carries the listener to the very end.

Tracklist

1. "Snow"
2. "Escape Velocity"
3. "Another World"
4. "Dissolve"
5. "Horse Power"
6. "Swoon"
7. "K+D+B"
8. "Wonders of the Deep"

Buy the album here.