![]() ![]() It seems like their partner in crime, Norman Cook a.k.a. The Chemical Brothers have to go back to the drawing board or just disconnect their decks and maybe give it up for a while. It’s just that the only people making waves in the dance music scene are artists like !!!. Could it be that I’m just getting old? Nah. Just like his role in R.E.M.’s “The Outsiders,” Tip’s message is political as he raps “ World/my finger is on the button…the time has come to Galvanize!” It’s a calling to arms to everyone in all the musical nations to stand up and make noise to fight the powers that be.īut sadly that is it, just one redeeming song on this drawn out album that should have been dubbed Press the Pause Button. Even with the cool funky rhythms that still seem to echo “Hey Boy, Hey Girl” from Surrender, the only reason this song is a highlight is the Tip. There is one shining spot on this long drawn out disappointment of a record and that’s the Q-Tip fronted single “Galvanize.” The only reason this song survives is because of the lyrical stylings of Q-Tip. If this is the music they are trying to push… give me a roll of E, some Chicago Deep House white label music and a Vicks pacifier and that would do it for me. All I know is that I won’t be going to some all night party in the desert to see these guys anytime soon. Even Tim Burgess’s appearance can’t save “The Boxer.” It tries to recycle a hip ’70s funk like vibe but it just goes round and round and round-all hype with no musical connections at all. It’s quite sad, kind of like those aging hippie rock tours that some Woodstock parents would go to in the eighties. “Believe” is a new song that drags and drags - have these guys ever heard of an edit? It sounds like an American blockbuster with beats, lots o’ noise and says nothing at all. It’s bad enough that the Chemical Bros, ten years later, are trying to recycle old rhythms with no effect what so ever. The boys seem stuck in the past to be like a bunch of post modern dinosaurs trying to bring up the noise to a dying rave party scene for the 90’s Jurassic Park generation. What Tom and Ed don’t realize is their scene is so over that we’re now using our glow sticks to help find our lost car keys in a parking lot in the dark. They had their musical compadres like Beth Orton, Noel Gallagher, Tim Burgess, Hope Sandoval, Bernard Sumner and Richard Ashcroft lifting their hyper-spaced out rhythms with memorable lyrics in such classic songs as “Where Do I Begin,” “Setting Sun” and “Out of Control.” I remember songs on Exit Planet Dust and Dig Your Own Hole and even on Surrender, on which the Brothers were working it out, changing the landscape of music with their addictive block rockin’ beats. If they want to continue to rock the block, Rowlands and Simons are going to have to cut back on the clutter and find a new focus.It doesn’t seem like so long ago that Los Hermanos Quimicos, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, were the innovators of the self proclaimed Big Beat scene. ![]() But while the Chemical Brothers have always played around with the notion of what constitutes dance music, Push The Button feels more like a hodge-podge of ideas rather than a decisive return to form. "Believe, with shouty vocals by Bloc Party front man Kele Okereke, harkens back to the best of the Chems house-y epics, though their trippy electro-folk number "Close Your Eyes, with sibling harmony group the Magic Numbers surprisingly registers as the most fully realised song. A more successful attempt at hip- hop is political polemic "Left Right, delivered with Jigga-style panache by Anwar Superstar (Mos Defs brother). Its an undeniably catchy track, but rather repetitive and slightly cheesy. Push the Button, their fifth studio album, continues the Brothers penchant for collaboration, kicking off with first single "Galvanize, featuring Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest rapping over a Middle Eastern-flavoured beat. So a new release from the UK duo is more cause for curiosity than wild anticipation. But in 2005, with the genre increasingly fragmented and big beat largely a thing of the past, the Chems heyday seems like it was eons ago. Thumping techno, psychedelic electro Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have covered all the bases over their 11-year career. No one would argue that the Chemical Brothers are synonymous with dance music. ![]()
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