By this stage in their career, you would expect Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands to be coasting.
After all, they've got nothing to prove after 30-plus years in the game and enough electronic anthems to send any party to the next level.Yet, The Chemical Brothers are not content with simply looking back at their legacy – their aim is to continue expanding it and establishing their omnipresence as consistent game-changers in the world of dance music.
Next year will see the duo return to Australia for the first time in nearly five years for some of their famed live shows, including a Victorian exclusive performance at Geelong's Mt Duneed Estate (with support acts The Presets, Anna Lunoe and James Holroyd), as part of the A Day On The Green concert series – and if you've never had a chance to experience these block-rocking beats in the live environment, there's never been a better time to rectify that.
"That transformative thing of music – how it moves you and what it does to you – is the reason we keep coming back." - The Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers' 2024 Australian tour brings two key exciting things with it. The first is 'For That Beautiful Feeling', the Brothers' tenth studio album (released in September).
Not only does the album see the duo reunite with Beck for the first time in eight years on the banging and euphoric 'Skipping Like A Stone', and Halo Maud leading the charge on the electric 'Live Again', it also sees them actively reacting to the world around them in the only way that they know how.
"We feel like what we create is perhaps a way of having moments of release and escape," Simons told Billboard in September.
"Obviously there's reflective music within the album, and there's [some] quite sad bits, but generally we wanted the tone to be. . . how can we get to the part of people that wants to come alive and not stay in this disenchanted, stagnant place?"
Stylistically, 'For That Beautiful Feeling' contains elements of the classic Chemical Brothers sound without ever tumbling down the rabbit hole of blind nostalgia.
After all this time, the Brothers have learned that mining the past is a futile endeavour – but if something new brings back the (beautiful) feeling of something old, they're not going to shy from it.
"We don't want to make 'Block Rockin' Beats' again, because we felt when we made that song, we totally captured that idea," explained Rowlands during an interview with Variety earlier this year, "but then, we might be playing with some drums or a bassline or something, and it'll be like, 'Oh, it's giving me that same excitement that I had – let's find a different way of framing that'.
"So, there was always a connection to things, and I think also the process we have of making music. Even though we've got a fancier studio and stuff, that's still based around just exploring and experimenting."
Whatever feeling that the album presents to you – be it euphoria, catharsis, joy or something more bittersweet – the duo hope it's an emotion that unabashedly presents itself.
Speaking to NPR's World Cafe earlier this month, Rowlands noted that pursuing something joyful within making music is "hard to do without it being too sentimental or too saccharine".
"A lot of music, especially dance and electronic music, cloaks itself," he said. "It's a lot easier to be cool. [With] this record. . . I think there was a real impetus to make something really direct. I know it's a corny thing to say, but I still see the studio as this place where you can walk in with nothing and come out transformed.
"I suppose that transformative thing of music – the creation of music and listening to music, and how it moves you and what it does to you – is the reason we keep coming back to it."
The second thing the tour brings with it, of course, is the duo's unrivalled live show. Originally, Simons told Billboard, The Chemical Brothers wanted to up their live visuals so that it wasn't just what he describes as "just the two of us awkwardly standing with synthesizers".
Neither he or Rowlands, however, could have quite anticipated how this would snowball into one of the most ambitious and elaborate productions in the modern live music industry. "It's just grown and grown, and now we've got these 40-foot clowns voicing the words," he added.
Marcus Lyall – the co-director of The Chemical Brothers' live show, alongside fellow visual artist Adam Smith – described the show as "basically a big art experiment,” during an interview with i-D from April, following their widely-acclaimed appearance at this year's Coachella.
"What [Simons and Rowlands have] graciously allowed us to do is create characters that can bring the songs to life," he continued.
Monsters, clowns, robots and even skeletons all take to the giant screens as Simons and Rowlands churn out their high-energy and seemingly-breathless live shows – including multiple characters that, according to Smith, fans have even gotten tattooed on themselves over the years.
"The actors that play these parts are really freaked out [by the tattoos], but I guess it says that the imagery resonates," he reasoned.
Australia is, of course, no strangers to The Chemical Brothers' legacy and evolution. In fact, it could be argued that Down Under was instrumental in building both up.
The pair's shows in the Boiler Room at the Big Day Out across the years have long become stuff of legend, and their first #1 album outside of the UK was on the ARIA charts with their 2002 classic 'Come With Us'.
With that in mind, expect their upcoming expedition to house plenty more beautiful feelings and unadulterated euphoria – from the boiler room to the green, these superstar DJs are here to make you go.
The Chemical Brothers 2024 Tour Dates
Tue 27 Feb - The Riverstage (Brisbane)Thu 29 Feb - Sydney Showground
Sat 2 Mar - A Day On The Green @ Mt Duneed Estate (Geelong)
