Following last year’s number 1, Grammy award winning album ‘We Are The Night’, The Chemical Brothers return with ‘Brotherhood’ a best of collection with a kick and a twist, set for release on 1st September 2008.
16 years, 10 million record sales, 5 consecutive number 1 albums and 4 Grammy awards would seem the perfect time to take stock of The Chemical Brothers’ heroic career but ‘Brotherhood’, makes no claims on being the definitive historical document of Tom and Ed’s career so far. ‘Brotherhood’ is definitely the Friday night collection, 15 stone cold classics from Tom and Ed’s illustrious back catalogue, reinforced and fortified for the floor.
From their formative Dust Brothers years and the honing of their sometimes literally ground-breaking, break-through, big beat calling cards (Leave Home, Chemical Beats and Block Rockin’ Beats ), The Chems crossed over to a wider audience. They have consistently invented dance music for a rock n roll age, in the mid nineties they become a foil to the nascent Britpop scene, acting to that as Brian Eno was to the glam rock age. In 1999 they performed to the biggest audience ever at Glastonbury (before the super fence went up), in 2005 they further compounded their widescreen popularity when ‘Galvanize’ became the most played song on the radio that year, and last year they came up with a unique way of moving the pigeons on by taking over Trafalgar Square with their retina scorching live show.
New tracks featured on Brotherhood ‘Midnight Madness’ and ‘Keep My Composure’, (featuring the shimmering flow of Baltimore’s Spank Rock) are classic Chemical Brothers, both sounding wholly timeless, startlingly original and completely different and appealing all at the same time
So this, then, is Brotherhood, The Chemical Brothers, out on the floor, totally in control. Here’s to sixteen more years. Here’s to the future.