The Chemical Brothers, No Geography review: A successful splicing of past and present

WIth their ninth album, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have mined their own classic sounds and melded them with new ones

(Press)

What do you do for your ninth album when you’re dance titans of the Nineties? You could serve up the bangers you’ve provided since 1992. Or you could swerve in an entirely new direction. On No Geography, The Chemical Brothers do neither – instead marrying the success of their past with a look towards the future.

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have mined not only their own past sounds – using equipment that has been hidden in Rowlands’ attic since the first two albums were made over 20 years ago – but others’ too, with the duo sampling soul numbers that long predate them.

Album opener “The Eve of Destruction” is an apocalyptic banger melding freaky robotic vocals with a retro house vibe and a sample of 1983 soul club hit “Weekend”. Even more menacing is “Mad as Hell”, which takes excerpts from 1976 film Network before plunging into a psychedelic cacophony of meteoric synths and aggressive beats. There’s tension, too, in the beefy, breakbeat-driven “We’ve Got to Try”, as distorted bass, strained, high-pitch vocals and their trademark squelchy synths meld with computer-game sounds. Sampled vocals from 1973’s “I’ve Got to Find a Way” by The Hallelujah Chorus are interwoven so seamlessly that new and old become one.

Tension aside, there’s a great sense of fun here. The title track is pure euphoria, as restless synths of a Utah Saints or Orbital rave break into swelling bass and melody. And they create the full club experience with “Got to Keep On”, on which the four-to-the-floor beat, funky rhythm guitar, sweet backing vocals and chiming bells make way for the simple sounds of happy party-goers; just as the anticipation builds, so does the instrumentation into a hypnotic crescendo. It’s masterful production.

That there are fewer guest singers than on previous albums – just Aurora and rapper Nene – only proves that the duo can do just as well without them. The Chemical Brothers have lost none of their dance verve. Their mega beats endure on No Geography, but this is also a stupendously successful splicing of past and present.