Nearly 20 years into their career and the pull of UK duo The Chemical Brothers still stands out as strong as ever. Already in 2010 we’ve seen fans of the big beat pioneers swoon – delicious punning! – over the seventh Chemical Brothers album, Further, and praise their live show by voting the ‘Chems as one of dance music’s 30 greatest live acts. Well, for those hoping, praying and holding their breath for a local return from the duo of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons the wait is over!

To get all the lowdown on their just announced 2011 tour, inthemix spoke to Tom Rowlands of the duo, who chatted openly about the fabled Chemical Brothers live show as well as how the duo developed a ‘different approach’ to creating their latest masterpiece Further.

Hey Tom, how are you mate?

“Good thanks, enjoying being at Exit Festival in Serbia.”

Yeah, it’s going well?

“It’s exciting to be here and play because it’s one of the few festivals left in Europe that we haven’t done before. It’s pretty amazing to be here actually, they’ve got the festival in this massive fortress.”

Obviously the European summer is such a busy time for artists and you guys are doing some big shows this season, how have the reactions been to the new material and the new show?

“It’s been interesting for us this time around. We started off with Further by doing these consecutive shows in London before the album was out and nobody had heard it. That was exciting and it felt like a challenge because usually when you go to a gig and a band says ‘we’re going to play a new one’ there’s this sort of audible groan from the crowd. So we just rocked up and decided we’d play a whole hour of new songs and it went really well. The people who were there knew they were going to get something different, it wouldn’t be a festival set from us and there were some great reactions to that. After doing a show at Sonar festival we’re kind of at a new point with the show and we’re being a bit more selective, I guess you could say, with which and how many festivals we’re doing this summer.”

Right, it sounds like it’s far less relentless than some of the other summer schedules I’m sure you guys have had in the past. Is that because you’d prefer to do studio work instead of live stuff at the moment?

“I think we got very fixated with the idea of Further and playing the whole album in full live. We knew that wouldn’t work really well in a big outdoor festival in Europe, so we thought we’d hold on off on doing that for now. After doing Exit festival we’re going to go back into the studio, then to America and then back to the studio and work on some new stuff which we want to have ready to bring you guys down in Australia. The plan is to put some new stuff together and make some changes and get ready for next year. We’ll just keep on rolling!”

One thing that’s really been stressed with Further is that it’s really visually synced together. What was the decision behind that and how has it worked so far?

“The main thing was that we wanted to make a record where every track had a visual component that it linked up to. The first idea we had when recording was that we didn’t want to collaborate with any other musicians on it, just do it all ourselves, and then that led us to want to play it all live. As that live idea developed we knew we would need to have a lot of emphasis on the visuals in our show and we were working very closely with Adam Smith – who’s done the visuals for every gig we’ve played from the first one we ever did in this dingy railway arch in South London in 1993 or whatever and is still doing it now – and it was just a collaboration between him and us and it was a chance to approach making a record in a different way. There was a lot of work involved in doing it and making it, but it was exciting and cool and just a different thing to do. It’s our seventh album so it’s interesting to have a new challenge at this stage in the game.”

I think that definitely comes through with the record, I mean, personally it feels like a really reinvigorated album from you guys. Was there something about the last couple of albums that you consciously wanted to change this rime around?

“Whenever we make a new record we think that it is the highest point that we can attain, and I love the records that we’ve made. But I think that when we got into the studio and started thinking about this one we decided that we had done that idea and pushed it to the furthest point that we could. Sometimes when you’re making a record there’s a lot of energy expended on figuring out who should sing on what song and when we put that limitation on it, that we wouldn’t work with any other artists, it became quite liberating for us. We were also doing a fair bit of DJ dates around that time and we were playing some of the stuff out and it just reinforced to us that what we were doing was working, and that’s what The Chemical Brothers is sometimes.”

Can fans expect to you to stay down this particular path for future releases?

“No, I don’t think that just because we’ve decided to make this record in this way that it means we won’t try other things. I think some of the most interesting music we’ve ever made has been in collaboration with other people, it was just for this record that it was interesting for us to have a change, really.”

I wouldn’t be overstating things to say that you guys are one of the most successful live acts in dance music and I think that your live show really developed how live dance acts should be. Having done it for so long, do you guys ever worry about repeating yourselves and going over the same territory that you pioneered?

“It’s all about having a forward momentum. That drives everything. We’ll always have something new to play and show people at our shows. Our show is very much about the combination of images and our music and the feelings and sensations that they give you. It’s influenced by a very psychedelic view of music, I think. And as our music progresses our show moves on as well. We’ve always had that idea even when we were playing in small clubs with a tiny set up and Adam would be projecting these demented images of people getting surgery on their eyeballs over us. We still want it to be rough like that and to have that connection even though it’s grown so much.”

Looking ahead to 2011, you guys will be returning to Australia for a run of shows, how’re you feeling about that?

“It’s always been an exciting place for us to play, we’re really happy to be coming back again.”

How will these new shows differ from the ones you played back in 2008?

“As well as these songs from Further we should hopefully have a lot of new stuff from the studio to play to Australian fans. That’s what we’re aiming to do anyway. We’ve got a lot of interesting and exciting stuff for you all.”

I think people are going to be pretty excited by this news, just last week, contributors to our website named The Chemical Brotherrs as the third greatest live act in dance music behind Prodigy and Daft Punk.

“Oh…wow. That’s pretty nice of you guys! I mean, we’ve always put a lot into how we play our music live. Our approach to playing live is very different to those two, especially The Prodigy, but I’ve seen both of them play many times so that’s really great. It should be fun to bring our psychedelic extravaganza to somewhere that’s as up for it as Australia always is.”

Chemical Brothers 2011 Australian tour dates proudly supported by inthemix:

The Riverstage, Brisbane – Friday March 4th, 2011
Tickets on sale August 5th – JOIN THE ROLL CALL

Sydney Entertainment Centre, Sydney – Thursday March 10th, 2011
Tickets on sale August 6th – JOIN THE ROLL CALL