Joy, hope, happiness, melancholy: The new Chemical Brothers album “For That Beautiful Feeling”, which will be released this Friday, awakens a whole spectrum of feelings.
In the past few weeks and months, electronica pioneers Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have proven that their big-beat sounds still captivate masses of people even after three decades. During the summer they toured various festivals in Europe. And it goes on almost seamlessly: with the new album they will go on tour through Great Britain and Ireland in autumn. This is followed by performances in Australia.
“For That Beautiful Feeling” is the British duo’s first album since 2019. The record was created in their own studio in southern England. They keep the exact location of the song factory, which is entered in the commercial register as Rowlands Audio Research Ltd, top secret, as if guarding the recipe for a magic potion.
The decoupled single “No Reason” is a track – as is so often the case with the Chemical Brothers – that you can’t listen to without wanting to move to the rhythm. Every place inevitably becomes a dance floor. The title track “For That Beautiful Feeling” is a rather dreamy, melancholic piece. “Goodbye” sounds wistful, as if it were dedicated to a long-gone love that has never been overcome. “Fountains” is a light, funky hip-hop sounding song. The passionate “Live Again” – also released as a single – sounds like hope and departure. In short: the album does not disappoint. Fans can look forward to eleven songs (including the intro) with which the Chemical Brothers build on their previous work without repeating themselves.
Who are the two who have been among the greats of their genre from the club scene in Manchester for so long? Doesn’t matter, at least that’s what the unpretentious artists think. “We skipped the cult of personality. We were never that kind of people and because of that we avoided a lot of press and stuff like that. That’s not our forte,” Rowlands recently told the Sydney Morning Herald, adding, “The music is more interesting than we are.”
One of their live performances is that you don’t actually see much of them themselves, but you are offered a stunning psychedelic spectacle in the form of projections and light effects. The two are not yet revealing what to expect from future shows, just this much: it can’t actually be big and spectacular enough for them, as Rowlands told the “Morning Herald”.
Another hallmark of the Chemical Brothers is that they are not at all shy about crossing genre boundaries. For their new album, they worked together with US artist Beck for the second time – on the track “Skipping Like A Stone”. For the first time they also got the French Halo Maud on board (“Live Again”, “For That Beautiful Feeling”). The cooperation with ex-Oasis guitarist and singer Noel Gallagher for their second album “Dig Your Own Hole” is legendary.
Incidentally, the book “Paused in Cosmic Reflection” is to be published in October, in which the two look back on their three-decade career. Even if their work and performances still seem futuristic, they are already part of music history.
Sources: “Sydney Morning Herald”, DPA
