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| Bad Chemistry The Chemical Brothers give creative electronica a beat-down | |
 They ain't heavy; they're the Chemical Brothers: Tom Rowlands (left) and Ed Simons |
[Editor's note: A correction ran concerning this story; see end of article.]
................You've heard the Chemical Brothers' new album before, even if its handlers at Astralwerks would have you think it reeks of newness. Whatever else Surrender may be, the album is the sound of British DJ-programmers Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands recycling every alt-rock, dance-floor, and TV-ad riff of the last four years. Why, one is compelled to ask, do people pay for cultural product that is already ubiquitous? Why see Star Wars when you can get it for free in your Happy Meal? Why buy the 'N Sync single when it's three minutes away from playing again on your radio? It's as if individual consumers can't believe what they already know to be true. You have to see Big Daddy yourself to reaffirm that it's exactly what you thought it would be--the sentimentality, the tit jokes, Adam Sandler's Chester-the-Molester cheeks.
Whoever is in charge of this sort of thing is getting better at it. It took punk rock 15 years of trickling down through a thousand older brothers' record collections before Green Day finally saw some green. True enough, big beat (read: U.K. funk without soul) hasn't reached Nirvana yet. Fatboy Slim and his Chemical brethren lack strong identities and heavy radio play (in the U.S., anyway), although MTV has been kindlier to their food-court sounds. With the exception of Prodigy, no electronicareerists have hit the American Top Ten, although Surrender certainly seems to have a shot. The music has quickly penetrated the culture's ears nonetheless; Slim's "The Rockafeller Skank" has become the "Me and You and a Dog Name Boo" for navel-pierced middle managers everywhere.
Just as the British blues movement of the early Sixties offered us John Mayall as the next Jimmy Reed, big beat would have us believe that five decades of R&B, three of funk, and two of hip hop have been preparation for this banality. As with the video system George Lucas has created to replace film prints in the movie theaters, there's a sense of imminence and momentum wound up in big beat's campaign--the Force is with it. Martinican cultural theorist Franz Fanon once wrote, "However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white." He might have been writing about radio.
The point isn't to fetishize race (need it be said that big beaters are overwhelmingly white?) or make claims for any sort of musical "purity." All art is hybrid, and any trip to Detroit will reveal that some of the finest modern African-American music is as resolutely anti-emotional as Surrender. There is a temptation to claim that big beat deracinates hip hop and makes it Euro. But that's too easy an answer (even for me) and it really applies to the Brothers' last record more than this one.
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Also in this Issue
- Lab Culture The revolution will not be: Stereolab. (Music)
- Fine Line For 30 years Milo Fine has been improvising music--and revising himself (Bringing It All Back Home)
- More articles from this issue...
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- To Africa, to Home Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate bridge the Delta and Mali with their gorgeous new album, Kulanjan (Sep 1, 1999)
- Walk Like a Panther Baritone saxophonist Fred Ho makes music for the revolution. (Aug 25, 1999)
- Adam's Ribfest Taunting Lilith sisters and Warped brothers, L7 come back heavy, indie, and Happy (Aug 25, 1999)
- Something About Mary With her humble poise and non-Diva tone, Mary J. Blige is the unlikely heiress to Aretha's throne (Aug 25, 1999)
