The Chemical Brothers are back with a new release, We Are The Night, and we’ve got it in heavy rotation.

If you’re into big beats and classic analog synth grooves, The Chemical Brothers deliver with We Are The Night. It’s a quirky album that manages to be sonically experimental within a dance-friendly rhythmic framework.

The CD kicks off with the chemically induced No Path To Follow, which is basically the phrase “There’s no path to follow” repeated in a high male voice and an unnaturally deep bass voice. This seques into the strange distorted sound effects of We Are The Night. The Brothers immediately lay down a classic analog sequencer groove, with layers of sampled drums, bizarro synth effects and lots of great synth sounds. It climaxes with a strange retro-Eno chorus that sounds like it could have come from Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.

The first single from the CD, Do It Again, captures a lot of the vibe of the release. Do It Again is this album’s Push The Button. On the track, The Chemical Brothers mix lots of lo-fi weirdness and quirky effects into a fairly straightforward dance groove. Just when you’re thinking their getting soft or pop, though, they throw in some left-field @#$# that leaves you scratching your head.

The Salmon Dance is an example of this. It’s basically a sing-song rap about how to do The Salmon Dance, but the Chemical Brothers inject a healthy dose of weirdness and humor into the track.

In addition to the vocal tracks, there are several instrumental tracks. The standout among these is Burst Generator, which makes great use of retro analog sounds, transforming them into something that sounds cutting edge. Another great instrumental is Harpoons, which has a blissed-out 70’s experimental electronic music vibe.

The tracks on We Are The Night don’t have as many obvious hooks as those on their previous release, Push The Button. Nevertheless, The Chemical Brothers’ latest release is one of their best yet, combining great beats, analog synth grooves and a respect for the sounds of electronic music of the last thirty-plus years to deliver an album that’s danceable, intelligent, quirky and fun.

Tracks:

• No Path To Follow
• We Are The Night
• All Rights Reversed (The Klaxons)
• Saturate
• Do It Again (Ali Love)
• Das Spiegal
• The Salmon Dance (Fatlip)
• Burst Generator
• A Modern Midnight Conversation
• Battle Scars (Willie Mason)
• Harpoons
• The Pills Won’t Help You Now (Midlake) Lis