The Chemical Brothers
Further

The story of Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands is quite well-known by now: two geeks in the '90s ended up making electronic music that would set a standard for the following decade. And three albums, each more beautiful than the last, essential to delve into this type of musical universe, welding, through various elements taken from the most disparate places, the more "laid-back" electronics with the more schizophrenic and danceable ones. Those three albums were such a powerful mix that they couldn't fit in a small club; they were such "big" beats that they just had to be played in enormous, preferably open, spaces.

Then came the following decade, and the Chemical Brothers found themselves having to legitimize their position: a more laborious task than they could have imagined. They had, in fact, undermined themselves with their own hands: they had generated such a creative thrust that high-level imitators were able to threaten their throne from all directions. The chemical brothers had underestimated the situation, and barely avoided being overwhelmed (see "Push The Button," a disappointing album, salvageable only for a few monstrous singles); then, in crisis, they even tried to divert attention, rowing in a completely different direction from what they had done before (see the almost kraut "We Are The Night," decent but with little appeal).

Finally, here we are at the new subsequent decade: the seventh album. With Further, the Chems want to reclaim what's theirs. They do so by starting from an unexpected path (even formally: 8 tracks for "only" 50 minutes of music) yet absolutely delightful: they make electronics converse with shoegaze. Naturally, not with shoegaze in the technical sense, which wouldn't make sense when talking about electronics, but with the dreamy and rarefied atmospheres of that genre. "Snow," that is, an industrial carpet (it sounds like a printer mixed with a 56k modem) on which a melodic bass and an angelic voice lie down to make love: you don't dance swinging your hips, but your eyes, closed. The melody envelops you, elevates you, makes you spin in infinite space, when suddenly an arm grabs you and tries to pull you onto the dance floor: you'd love to keep dreaming, but the arm is strong, convincing. "Escape Velocity," the longest track (almost 12 minutes), psychedelic, ambitious, persistent ever generated by the Chemical Brothers. The reference point is no longer the acidic funk of 10 years ago, but an orgy of '70s keyboards of different timbres (one sounds like "Baba O' Riley", I swear) that mischievously rub against each other, touch, make out, penetrate, and splash each other. Moreover, this piece contains the most dizzying crescendo ever heard in a mainstream dance track: at some point it really feels like standing next to a departing Airbus A380.

After stunning us enough, the two brothers allow us to catch our breath with "Another World": meaning the ethereal suggestions of hypnagogic pop (or chillwave, if you prefer) brought to a rave for 50,000 people. And here again, the trance, the ecstatic disorientation you wouldn't expect but deeply enchants you, and you really can't resist, you absolutely don't think about those fuzzes, those crackles, those syncopated rhythms, those stadium handclaps from the past you liked so much. However, signs of a flourishing past are not lacking: "Dissolve," for instance, updates "Let Forever Be" to the '10s (but without any cheap pop star singing over it. Thankfully, those didn't survive the last decade). After this LSD trip, why not immediately take a dose of coke? Here comes the angry whinnying of the furious "Horse Power": a track whose reproduction during aerobics classes has been banned by the most important international human-esque rights treaties, due to the indecorous effects it can have on those weak of heart. And then, there's "Swoon," a sweaty big single with a synth riff that unscrews your head (sguiiiiiish), "K+D+B," a percussive hammering with a melodic scratchy flutter and a duet of faint voices on top (one of which is Rowland's own), and finally, the airy and liberating "Wonders Of The Deep" which personally reminded me of certain atmospheres of the Roman shoegaze group Klimt 1918.

In short, a courageous album: a risky hot/cold alternation, a terrifying mixture of drugs that could guarantee irreversible coma to anyone not proficient enough to properly dose it. Here, the duo's experience was crucial and the result is an overwhelmingly strong high that doesn't cause paranoia and never really bores.

Their best album since Come With Us (if not Surrender): 4.5 and no fuss.