A demo of Noise.io – an iPhone synthesizer – with Chemical Brothers’ style arpeggiation/sequencing.

The Chemical Brothers have launched Midnight Madness with Google Earth – a strange mashup that takes fan videos and plots them on Google Earth. 

The idea is that you can surf around the world with Google Earth and see what Chemical Brothers fans are up to. 

Here’s the link to view the project (requires Google Earth).

I’ve been impressed by a lot of musicians’ new media projects, but Midnight Madness isn’t that successful. It takes a long time to download Google Earth, and, once you’ve loaded up Midnight Madness in it, it’s cumbersome to use. 

If you give it a try, let me know what you think.

Brotherhood is an unusual release. The box set comes with two CDs. The first CD is a greatest hits collection, spanning the CB’s 13 year career. It also comes with a new track, Keep My Composure. 

It wasn’t that long ago that the Chemical Brothers put out their last greatest hits release, Singles 93-03. And there’s a lot of overlap between the two collections. 

Judged for its own merits, disc one is clearly a great collection of some of the most influential electronic dance music of the last fifteen years. What’s really interesting with this release, though, is the second disc, which contains Electronic Battle Weapons 1-10.

According to the band, “Since 1996 Electronic Battle Weapons have acted as the laboratories for The Chems devious musical experiments and laid the rhythmic and melodic foundations for numerous tracks as well as providing some of the duos most formidable mixes. Until now Electronic Battle Weapons 1-9 have only been available on various limited formats and this is the first time they have been widely available.”

To these ears, Electronic Battle Weapons is some of the most interesting work that the Chemical Brothers have done. The tracks are much longer than their singles, giving them time to stretch out, and are less tied to traditional song structure than singles. 

The tracks don’t stray far from the Chemical Brothers’ familiar style, but they seem to highlight the best facets of the group’s sound: massive beats, great synth basslines and aggressive noise effects. Highlights of the disc include Electronic Battle Weapon 4 (Freak of the Week), Electronic Battle Weapon 7 (Acid Children) and Electronic Battle Weapon 9. 

Extra discs are often throwaway remixes and second rate tracks. With Brotherhood, the Chemical Brothers give you their greatest hits on disc 1 – but the best stuff is on disc 2. 

Essential listening for Chemical Brothers fans.

TRACKLISTING:

DISC 1
01. Galvanize
02. Hey Boy Hey Girl
03. Block Rockin’ Beats
04. Do It Again
05. Believe
06.Star Guitar
07. Let Forever Be (Featuring Noel Gallagher)
08. Leave Home
09. Keep My Composure (Featuring Spank Rock)
10. Saturate
11. Out Of Control
12. The Golden Path – (Featuring The Flaming Lips)
13. Setting Sun – (Featuring Noel Gallagher)
14. Chemical Beats

DISC 2
1-10 Electronic Battle Weapons

Need proof that you don’t need the latest and greatest gear to make electronic music?

Just check out the funk on the Chemical Brothers live gear set up!

Here’s the extreme gear porn close up to make things clear for you:

Their Roland SH-101 looks beat up, with tape on the corners. Their Octave Cat looks like they play it with a hammer. Their Akai MPC looks like they either took a blowtorch to it.

Next time you think you need new gear to make music, remember what the Chemical Brothers are doing with their knackered gear.

Photos via Ben from Galactic, via MusicThing

Make your own short clip (from 2 to 20 seconds) or photograph about your favourite Chemical Brothers track. Then upload your work here on to the Google Map (after the jump) and tag it to it’s exact global location.

A selection of the best work will be featured in a new concept music video for the Chemical Brothers, To celebrate the launch of the new Chemical Brothers’ album ‘Brotherhood’ videos will feature on a Google Earth channel available on September 1, as well as on the Chemical Brothers Youtube channel.

Deadline for submissions via Chemical Brothers’ website:

Monday 25th August 2008 – 13.00 GMT – BUT THE SOONER THE BETTER!

The Chemical Brothers have released this awesomely freaky parcour-style video for the track Midnight Madness, from their upcoming greatest hits compilation Brotherhood, set for release Sept. 1st, 2008.

Brotherhood is made up of 2 discs. The first is a collection of 13 singles from the band’s back catalog, and new track Keep My Composure which features Baltimore’s Spank Rock.

The 2nd disc will feature exclusively Electronic Battle Weapons 1-10.

Since 1996 Electronic Battle Weapons have acted as the laboratories for The Chems musical experiments and laid the rhythmic and melodic foundations for numerous tracks as well as providing some of the duos most formidable mixes. This is the first time they have been widely available.

Brotherhood will be preceded by the digital download single Midnight Madness on 4th August 2008.

Tracklisting

CD 1
01 “Galvanize” (Radio Edit) (from Push The Button)
02 “Hey Boy Hey Girl” (from Surrender)
03 “Block Rockin’ Beats” (from Dig Your Own Hole)
04 “Do It Again” (Edit) (from We Are The Night)
05 “Believe” (Edit) (from Push The Button)
06 “Star Guitar” (Edit) (from Come With Us)
07 “Let Forever Be” (featuring Noel Gallagher) (from Surrender) – 3:56
08 “Leave Home” (from Exit Planet Dust)
09 “Keep My Composure” (featuring Spank Rock)
10 “Saturate” (from We Are the Night)
11 “Out Of Control” (Radio Edit) (from Surrender)
12 “Midnight Madness” – 4:00
13 “The Golden Path” (featuring The Flaming Lips) (Edit) (from Singles 93-03) – 3:59
14 “Setting Sun” (featuring Noel Gallagher) (Radio Edit) (from Dig Your Own Hole) – 4:00
15 “Chemical Beats” (from Exit Planet Dust) – 4:02

CD 2
01″Electronic Battle Weapon 1″ (version of “It Doesn’t Matter” from Dig Your Own Hole)
02 “Electronic Battle Weapon 2″ (version of “Don’t Stop the Rock” from Dig Your Own Hole)
03 “Electronic Battle Weapon 3″ (version of “Under the Influence” from Surrender)
04 “Electronic Battle Weapon 4″ (”Freak of the Week”, from the single “Music: Response”)
05 “Electronic Battle Weapon 5″ (version of “It Began in Afrika” from Come With Us)
06 “Electronic Battle Weapon 6″ (remix of “Hoops” from Come With Us)
07 “Electronic Battle Weapon 7″ (”Acid Children” from the single “Galvanize”)
08 “Electronic Battle Weapon 8″ (version of “Saturate” from We Are the Night)
09 “Electronic Battle Weapon 9″
10 “Electronic Battle Weapon 10″ (version of “Midnight Madness”)

Brotherhood comprises 2 discs, the first is a collection of 13 undeniable benchmark singles from the band’s immense back catalogue and new track Keep My Composure which features the shimmering flow of Baltimore’s Spank Rock.

The 2nd disc will feature exclusively Electronic Battle Weapons 1-10. Since 1996, Electronic Battle Weapons have acted as the laboratories for The Chem’s musical experiments and laid the rhythmic and melodic foundations for numerous tracks. Until now, Electronic Battle Weapons 1-9 have only been available on various limited formats. This is the first time they have been widely available.

Brotherhood will be preceded by the digital single Midnight Madness, the full-length of which will be included on Disc 2.

Tracks:

Disc 1
01.     Galvanize
02.     Hey Boy Hey Girl
03.     Block Rockin’ Beats
04.     Do It Again
05.     Believe
06.     Star Guitar
07.     Let Forever Be (Featuring Noel Gallagher)
08.     Leave Home
09.     Keep My Composure (Featuring Spank Rock)
10.     Saturate
11.     Out Of Control
12.     The Golden Path – (Featuring The Flaming Lips)
13.     Setting Sun – (Featuring Noel Gallagher)
14.     Chemical Beats

Disc 2
1-10    Electronic Battle Weapons

Apache My Bitch Up

Air – Kelly Watch The Stars (Moog Cookbook Remix)

Apache Vs Chemical Brothers

Apache vs Voodoo People

Apache – the “Come to Daddy” mix

This gets my vote as the scariest mashup:

It just goes to show – any song can be mashed up with the Apache video. There’s plenty more at the

Other nominees were:

• D.A.N.C.E. – Justice
• Sound Of Silver – LCD Soundsystem
• We Are Pilots – Shiny Toy Guns
• Elements Of Life – Tiësto

When I reviewed We Are The Night, we said “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.”

If you haven’t heard the album, you can get a taste of it from the video for the Chemical Brothers’ Do It Again. You can also remix the Chemical Brother’s track Salmon Dance.

Not sure about you, but the Salmon Dance isn’t sounding so fresh to me anymore.

Previous Grammy Award Winners for Best Electronic/Dance Album are:

• 2007 – Madonna for Confessions on a Dance Floor
• 2006 – The Chemical Brothers for Push the Button
• 2005 – Basement Jaxx (producer & artist) for Kish Kash

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

Check out the sweet synth setup that the Chemical Brothers use to create their quirky synthtronica. They’ve got a page devoted to their synth gear at their site.

We spotted a Doepfer modular, a Roland System 100, a Future-Retro Revolution, and a couple of EMS synths. Did we miss anything?

The Chemical Brothers have announced a remix contest for their track The Salmon Dance (above). Here are the details:

Here’s your chance to remix The Salmon Dance!

Just download the zip file below to get the raw audio files and mix away.
CHEMICAL BROTHERS REMIX FILES – click to download

Post your completed remix as the first track in your MySpace music player and then leave a comment HERE with the link.
The winner of the contest will have his or her remix featured in The Chemical Brothers’ MySpace player for 2 weeks – and receive a prize pack of Chemical Brothers 12″ singles. All entries must be received by Friday, August 24th at noon EST. Please keep an mp3 of your remix, as the winner will need to provide us with one to put in our player.

It’s a cool opportunity to do something F’d up!

The Chemical Brothers upcoming album, We Are The Night, is set for release on June 19th 2007. According to the group, it’s “the Chemical Brothers finest record yet, twelve tracks of psychedelic warehouse party acid music.”

Here’s their press release on it:

We Are The Night is a route map through modern psychedelia; a derailed rollercoaster that barrels the listener onto a journey that moves seamlessly from frenetic percussion workout that threatens to splash out of the speakers, to metronomic pulses that sound like the kind of music that gets played out at some kind of future disco populated entirely by robots; from the wheezing groans of modular synthesizers that sound like they’ve been left out in the rain to die, to hallucinogenic public service announcements about salt water fish. All the while, disembodied robo-voices boom out mind control commandments as guest vocals weave in and out of tracks like previously undiscovered instruments…

Effortlessly evoking the dancefloors of Manchester and Minneapolis in the early ’80s and London of 2007, We Are The Night is The Chemical Brothers at their very best. Infectious from the ominous opening through to the gorgeous dying embers, the record features some of their most mind-blowing music to date, a massive step up for the duo in terms of both production and sound. The album builds on the band’s immense back catalogue and reaffirms them as true pioneers of electronic music, a band who are consistently hugely successful both critically and commercially.

We Are The Night follows on from 2005’s Push The Button, which featured the huge single Galvanize. As is often the way with Chemical Brothers records, it achieved a life of its own, soundtracking everything from South American raves to the London’s Notting Hill Carnival and all points in between. The duo recently sneaked out an album preview (the anonymously released ultra limited “Electronic Battle Weapon” 8 & 9). Much of the record has been tested out on dancefloors across the world during the past twelve months.

Tracks:

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

The Chemical Brothers provided a track to go with Jacob Epstein’s 1913-14 sculpture Torso in Metal from The Rock Drill. One new track will be made available to visitors every month, including contributions from The Long Blondes, Roll Deep and the Union of Knives.

“We chose to write music for The Rock Drill as it seemed so dynamic, powerful and modern – it just seemed so techno,” said the Chemical Brothers, “We could imagine music as soon as we saw it.”

“The sculpture has a feeling of movement. We wanted to capture the latent feeling of force that the figure has,” they added. “Having heard music in art galleries before that is largely ambient, we wanted to make something rhythmic and structured that connected to the piece.”

via BBC

Push the Button is the CB’s fifth studio album, and it’s a nicely crafted, mature work of pop electronica. There’s nothing on the album that’s too surprising or edgy, but it’s full of well-crafted, stylish work.

The CD is strong overall, full of the big beats and trippy effects that have made the Chemical Brothers one of the top electronica acts.

It kicks off with Galvanize. The Brothers are joined by A Tribe Called Quest guest rapper Q-Tip. The track mixes a Bhangra-style violin sample with big beats. Hold Tight London is a hypnotic track with female vocals that shows off the Brothers melodic style.

Come Inside sexes things up a bit. It’s a big-beat track overlayed with a female/vocoded vocalist asking “Would you like to come inside?”

Shake Break Bounce is short but sweet. It’s built around a flamenco guitar sample. Once the Chemical Brothers get done with it, it sounds a bit like Fatboy Slim running Ottmar Liebert through a blender. Video game noises bounce between the speakers, and the whole thing starts an stops on a dime.

Push the Button is a good album – probably as good as anything that the Chemical Brothers has ever done. After several disappointing albums recently from 90’s electronica artists, this CD is a welcome changes. Push the Button is an album that should keep Chemical Brothers fans happy, and win them some new ones.

Tracks:

• Galvanize
• The Boxer
• Believe
• Hold Tight London
• Come Inside
• The Big Jump
• Left Right
• Close Your Eyes
• Shake Bounce Break
• Marvo Ging
• Surface To Air

If you’ve listened to much electronic music, you’ve probably heard some of the cuts on this album. “Leave Home” starts the album off, with a sampled chorus of “The brother’s gonna work it out.” And work it out they do.

This album helped define the big beat style. It features compressed and distorted beats throughout. The basslines are 303 distorted sequences. The Chemical Brothers don’t use the typical filter sweeps to generate interest in their basslines. Instead, they run the 303 through a variety of distortion devices to give the bassline of each cut a different sound.

Some of the standout cuts on this album are Chemical Beats, Leave home, and Three Little Birdies Down Beats. They get help on a couple of cuts. Vocalist Beth Horton joins them on “Alive Alone”, and Tim Burgess on “Live is Sweet”. A couple of slower cuts show another side of their talents. “Chico’s Groove”, especially, provides a break from the aggressive beats. It manages to be downtempo and distorted at the same time.

The Chemical Brothers are Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons. On Exit Planet Dust, they establish a unique sound that they’ve developed in later albums.

If you like dance-oriented electronica, Exit Planet Dust is one you must have.