Chemically Enhanced

When they released ‘Surrender’ way back in 1999, few could have foreseen quite how spectacularly The Chemical Brothers would then go off the creative boil.

It seemed that after the delivery of that masterpiece, they were far too busy doing things like finding a way of being bald and having long hair at the same time and not wearing any shoes to find the time to make the kind of amyl-soaked, neo-psychedelic bangers that made their name.

Since then, we’ve had only flashes of their original brilliance (this has literally amounted to no more than five instances of thinking ‘oh, that sounds alright’ while listening to their music).

This is one of those instances, TIMES A FUCKING MILLION.

Forget ‘sounding alright’, this record sounds bloody amazing. A perfect fusion of both bands’ respective sounds, it does exactly as all good collaborations should by giving the listener the best of both worlds, like some kind of rave-based Crunch Corner.

Over the top of the daftest ‘slice’ of Big Beat (a type of music that people used to dance to in the 1990s) you’ll ever hear again, neon new boys Klaxons do their thing (ie making not a lot of sense and doing those weird spiralling harmony things) to perfection.

For once it sounds like the Chemicals actually have a vague knowledge of how to produce a dance record, too - what at first sounds simple turns out to be packed with little hooks and nuances, and each time the ‘chorus’ arrives, well, it hits you with the approximate force of a tsunami made up of a million wrecking balls.

It remains to be seen whether this marks a proper return to form or just another blip in The Chemical Brothers’ post-millennial mediocrity - new album ‘We Are The Night’ will settle that one - but for now, break out the room aroma, snap a glowstick or two, throw some shapes and, for God’s sake, PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS IN THE AIR.