Interview: Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons' chemical attraction | The Independent Features Interview: Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons' chemical attraction As their latest album, We Are The Night, tops the charts the duo reveal the secret to their long-lasting music career and friendship. Thursday 18 October 2007 23:00 BST Click to follow Interview: Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons' chemical attraction 1/3 Still block-rocking after all these years: Ed Simons (left) and Tom Rowlands 3/3 What with Klaxons winning the Mercury Prize last month, and young pretenders such as New Young Pony Club, Shitdisco and Hadouken! all storming the charts, it seems that dance music is not as dead as everyone had thought it was. The Chemical Brothers don't seem much bothered either way. Earlier this month they won the award for Best Electronic Artist or DJ at the BT Digital Music Awards and their latest album, We Are the Night, recently topped the chart – the fifth time in a row they have accomplished the feat.

And with a nice touch of scene-making serendipity, Jamie Reynolds and James Righton of Klaxons are among the many guest acts featured on the album, lending a touch of spiky nu-rave dynamics to the track "All Rights Reversed". "Whether it is a time of boom or famine for dance music has never made any difference to us," says Tom Rowlands. "We never saw ourselves responsible for a scene or anything. For us it was always all about making a record that would excite people and show them that we had something interesting to offer." Thanks in part to this philosophy, the duo now find themselves cast in the not-altogether-welcome role of last men standing. None of their contemporaries from the 1990s is still in quite such rude health either creatively or commercially as the Chemical Brothers. But Ed Simons doesn't feel that longevity for the sake of it is a particularly worthy aim. "Some people would see it more as a curse," he says. "We didn't set out to last a long time. It's more about making music that's exciting, particularly on stage, where we're playing these festivals all round the world and people seem to be excited when we come on.

It's gratifying." Rowlands and Simons are sitting in the bar of The Social, a club in the West End of London. This is not the same Social where the pair famously enjoyed a DJ residency in 1994 when they were still known as The Dust Brothers, an engagement that resulted in the album Live at the Social Volume 1 (eventually released in 1996). "That was the Sunday Social in the Albany at the top of Great Portland Street," Simons says. "It only ran for about 14 weeks and then they had to find somewhere else." Rowlands picks up a copy of the Live at the Social CD, which I have brought along to jog a few memories. "I haven't even got a copy of this myself," he says, looking at the picture of his younger self, long blond hair dangling all over the decks. "That's all gone," he says, ruefully. "It does feel a long time ago. But it's all part of the same thing, really." Maybe so.

But a Sunday-night residency mixing and matching a string of obscure tracks to a bunch of James Brown beats in front of 150 people seems a long way removed from the kind of shows that Rowlands and Simons have been playing this year. These have included festival headlining appearances at Creamfields, Glastonbury and the Electric Picnic in Ireland, and a special one-off spectacular in Trafalgar Square. They have more shows coming up all over Eastern and Western Europe, South America, Australasia and a tour of the UK, including a three-night stand at Brixton Academy, the venue where they hold the record for the most gigs played in a single year ("we've got a special plaque for it, somewhere"). It is, perhaps, ironic that a 1990s dance act should have become such a huge and respected live attraction in the 21st century. Neither of them sings or plays an instrument on stage (Rowlands can play keyboards and "bad guitar"; Simons doesn't play an instrument at all). So what exactly do they do when they "play live"?

"We always think we should maybe put on a little film before we start, to explain the process of what is happening," Rowlands says before embarking on a lengthy explanation of how it is all about manipulating an electronic brain to determine exactly which combination of musical information stored on synthesisers, sequencers and samplers is deployed at any given moment of the performance. "A very early cliché established that electronic music was just two guys twiddling knobs on stage," Simons says. "We never found that intrinsically boring, but when we play live, we've always carried around our huge speakers and the visuals. We want people to experience the music in a really exciting environment, and the visuals are part of that, to absorb people in it so that you get disorientated, you get completely intoxicated by the music. That's always been the point of making it an experience. That goes back to Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground... "It might be unfashionable to say, but that's the kind of experience that we've been trying to create when we've played from pretty much day one." So are they happy for people to remember their light-show, but not them? "Yes. That's fine," Rowlands insists.

"Neither of us started making music out of a desire to have a foot up on the monitor at the front of the stage telling you, 'this is how it's gonna be'. I like to see people do that as well. But it's not what we want to do." The man responsible for the stunning visuals at the Chemical Brothers shows is Adam Smith, who used to run a company called Vegetable Vision. "Adam was doing the visuals at the very first gig we did, at Andy Weatherall's club," Rowlands says. "And we're still together. When we're writing music we play it to him. As we're making the album, he's getting ideas and stuff. We may have a specific idea for a song, but generally we just let him run riot." Is he the third Chemical Brother? "Definitely," Rowlands admits. "Especially when we play live." "We have three or four very longstanding collaborators," Simons says. "Our engineer, Steve Dub, for example. If there is one secret to our success it could be that when we find someone we enjoy working with, we keep working with that person.

That's my advice." While keeping an unusually stable team of core personnel in the background, the Chemicals have maintained a contrastingly rapid, revolving-door policy when it comes to their featured collaborators. In the past these have included Noel Gallagher, Bernard Sumner, Bobby Gillespie, Richard Ashcroft and Beth Orton. The guest performers on We Are the Night are a typically motley crew, including the folk singer Willy Mason, the rapper Fat Lip, from the Pharcyde, and Tim Smith, the singer with the up and coming Texan indie-rock band Midlake. So are the Chemical Brothers an A&R team as much as a pair of DJs and producers? "Hopefully not," says Rowlands, clearly not very impressed with this suggestion. "Obviously we gravitate towards things that we like. We hear something in their voice that connects with something we're doing. But it always comes out of us writing music. That's the first thing that we do. Then we start imagining a voice. We've never tried to do it the other way round." "Before we made music together, when we were students in Manchester, our friendship was based on playing each other music," Simons says. "We used to go to clubs together.

We used to go record-shopping together. So finding people to work with is really an extension of that. We have endless discussions about who we might work with." Rowlands adds: "It's usually the most traumatic part of making records." Meeting the Brothers for an hour or so, you get a sense of the tremendous rapport that has bound them together for so many years. But relationships change, and the two of them now lead widely divergent lives away from their work. Rowlands, 36, is married with three kids and lives in Lewes in the rural south of England, while Simons, 35, remains single, and lives in Notting Hill, West London. "The 1990s was spent in each other's pockets and in the studio the whole time," Simons says. "We were either on tour or we used to go on holiday together and that resulted in certain records and a certain working relationship, but now we have a different arrangement. But I actually think the music we've made in the last five years is the best we've made." "The key is that we're still friends," Rowlands adds.

"Sometimes it's fraught, as it was when we were students in a house together, arguing about what to watch on telly." At the end of the interview, Simons nips out for a cigarette, while Rowlands, a confirmed non-smoker, hangs around chatting in the bar. He looks wistfully once again at my copy of the Live at the Social CD. "I'll have to go on eBay and get myself a copy of this album," he says. "It's always the ones that you play at a party that disappear. I've been through about five copies of this already." The Chemical Brothers play Koko, London NW1 ( on 25 October; their UK tour runs from 6 to 15 December ( Matt Cox: MIDI Tech For The Chemical Brothers | Sound On Sound Matt Cox: MIDI Tech For The Chemical Brothers Interview | Engineer Published December 2011 By David Greeves The Chemical Brothers bring more gear on stage than most of us have in our studios. Matt Cox is the man who has to make sure it all works come showtime!

The Chemical Brothers live at Creamfields 2011: Ed Simons (left) and Tom Rowlands are barely visible at the heart of their spectacular light show.Photo: Melmif Photos The Chemical Brothers have enjoyed a longevity that is rare in the world of dance music. After helping to define the 'big beat' sound of the early '90s, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have given their contemporaries — few of whom are still with us — a masterclass in how to keep on keeping on. There's no real mystery to the duo's staying power. All it takes is a string of blockbuster studio LPs (including an unbroken sequence of five number one albums, from 1997's Dig Your Own Hole to 2007's We Are The Night), countless floor-filling singles and a steady stream of ground-breaking music videos, inspired collaborations and inventive remixes. The duo's feats as a live act have also made a huge contribution to their on-going popularity. There are few other instrumental electronic acts who could fill an arena on any continent, and, arguably, none that can work an audience of that size into quite such a frothing frenzy.

The Chemical Brothers' live show — or should that be live experience — is a full-scale assault on the senses, combining the duo's grungy synths, vertiginous filter sweeps, sledgehammer beats and irresistible, straight-for-the-jugular hooks with the retina-melting visual spectacle of a fully synchronised video and light show. Brothers In Arms Matt Cox tunes up a Roland Jupiter 6 polysynth prior to the Creamfields show. Note the custom-made covers that keep the gear dry backstage. The Chemical Brothers don't take the easy route when it comes to playing their music live, as evidenced by the 360-degree array of keyboards, synth modules, drum machines and effects that accompanies them on stage, with Rowlands and Simons in the centre, manipulating the controls like a pair of mad scientists. The man charged with making sure this extensive, eccentric collection of gear works without a hitch is MIDI tech and live programmer Matt Cox, who has also worked as a tech, programmer and system designer for the likes of Goldfrapp, Hot Chip, the Prodigy and the Kaiser Chiefs. Cox followed a familiar route into the music industry, even if his starting point was more unusual.

"I was a signaller in the army [responsible for radio and communications] when I was a teenager,” he says, "and I got a good background in electronics from doing that. But I was always really into electronic music. I got into techno in '88 and was fascinated. I was going home on leave from the army and going raving, and I'd be thinking, 'I love this record, how the hell do they make this?' So I started buying SOS and magazines like that in the early '90s with a view to getting into sound engineering. "I bought myself out of the army, got onto a recording course in Manchester and got a job working in a studio, just as a tape-op and brewer-upper and all that, which is how I got a foot in the door. Through that studio I got to meet various bands in Manchester, one of which was Lionrock [the 1990s big-beat duo consisting of Justin Robertson and Roger Lyons]. After they did their first album in our studio, I ended up looking after it on the road, setting up the MIDI and the keyboards, and through that I got the Chemical Brothers job.

My first tour with them was at the end of '96 and it's just gone from there really. I don't do any studio stuff at all now: it's purely looking after keyboards and programming MIDI for live acts.” Block Rocking Beats Most of the Chemical Brothers' on-stage gear is housed in custom curved racks that are designed to echo the lines of their favourite Serge modular synth. When it comes to looking after the Chemical Brothers, Cox certainly has his hands full. The duo's live setup includes a mind-boggling array of digital and analogue equipment, ranging from the brand-new to the practically antique, all of which needs to be kept in rock-solid sync with Mac laptops running Logic and Ableton Live. But the heart of the live show is, somewhat surprisingly, the battle-scarred Mackie 32:8 mixer that sits centre stage in front of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons. "It's a very spontaneous thing that they do live,” Matt explains. "It's like an instrument almost, the Mackie. They throw faders up, unmute stuff — they know where everything is exactly.

Some of the filters in the racks are fed off direct outs, so if one of them thinks, 'That Electrix filter would be great across that synth,' he can just grab the direct out jack, put it in the direct out of the synth that he wants to get at, then he's away in the rack twiddling the filter. They've got so used to that interface in front of them that it's almost second nature. They can have an idea and put it into practice in an instant.” But the Mackie is more than a glorified patchbay for all of the on-stage gear: it's where the whole show takes shape. "In Logic, we've got a few main audio elements which occupy the first 12 channels of the Mackie. Then on the Ableton computer, there are elements of that core track that are very similar. So there might be a bass line and a drum loop coming off Logic that are a core part of one song, but then in Ableton there'll be the loop on its own and the bass line on its own. That means they can then EQ the loop on the Ableton playback differently to the Logic playback, for example, and cut between them as if they were doing a DJ cut.

They're still playing the same song, but completely changing the sound on the fly. So there's a lot of things that are mirrored on the desk to allow DJ-style moves and effects to happen. It's a bit like what people do in Ableton, but we're doing it with hardware. It's almost back-to-front!” Push The Button Almost every control is labelled or has a position marked on it, so Matt can check that everything is correctly set before the show starts: "The main part of my job is in the preparation — making sure that everything is precisely set up for the show. I always start at the same point and finish at the same point when I'm checking everything. It's all marked on the keyboards, but I've also got copious notes on old patch recall sheets for things like the Monopoly and the 101. Checking and setting everything has kind of become second nature now, but I still write everything down, especially when a new toy turns up.” We're beginning to get the sense that this is not your average live show.

Though Matt offers the succinct explanation, "They're essentially DJ-ing their own songs with some analogue kit over the top,” this does somewhat play down both what's involved and the challenges he's had to overcome to make the whole thing work. According to Matt, the sound the audience out front hears at a Chemical Brothers show is a combination of multiple elements. The audio from Logic and Live generally delivers drums, bass and "the bed of things” as far as most tracks go, while the synths on stage provide everything on top. These are played live and, in the case of the Elektron Monomachine SFX60+, also triggered by MIDI in the Logic arrangement. "That's one of the few units that get a MIDI trigger from the Logic arrangement,” says Matt (the Roland Juno and Dave Smith Poly Evolver being the other two). "The MIDI parts are often taken from their original Logic session for that particular track and pasted at various points during the set. Rather than program-change things automatically, they like to dial it in themselves, so that's why you'll see all those labels on the unit — just little reminders to say 'that patch for this song'.

So they'll manually dial in the patch and then it'll get triggered via MIDI so they can be tweaking all the controls. "We do use some program-change messages. We've got an Elektron Machinedrum that's got some loops in it that aren't a bar long, so that needs to be program-changed specifically at a certain point, so the loop comes in at the right time. The synthesis in those Elektron units is so bonkers, you can make a drum noise end up sounding like a piece of metal or something. That's what they like to do sometimes: find a control that pitches something five octaves out the ceiling and make it sound like it's changed sex. It's like, 'What's he doing to that tonight?!' And then plaster all those delays and effects on it, and overdrive it to buggery…” The labelled Korg Nanokey in front of the Ableton laptop is mapped to different scenes in Live, just so that Cox can quickly call up and trigger certain sections during soundcheck.

On top of this, Tom and Ed are triggering pattern-based synths and marshalling the array of signature hits, vocal samples, sweeps and sound effects mapped to the various keyboards and control surfaces in front of them — all extensively and meticulously labelled — all the while using their racks of filters and effects to twist any and all of the above into oblivion. "Tom tends to do the lion's share of the mixing,” Matt explains, "and then Ed does the lion's share of the twiddling with envelopes and filter sweeps, mapping stuff to mod wheels and just messing about with it. There's always one of them who's darting around grabbing hold of things, but Ed does a lot of the hands-on stuff with the synths, while Tom's more kind of nailed to the desk, just keeping a lid on it. "If you went to five shows in a row, they'd all be different, sonically and musically. Apart from anything, there are often mistakes. One of them might go to dub a delay onto a synth, put it on the main kick drum by mistake and then go, 'Hang on a minute, I quite like that!' and play around with it for five minutes.

And then the next night, they'll do it again at the same point and just refine it a little bit. The show is an ever-changing thing, a lot of the time, for that very reason. Because there are so many parameters, you can't reproduce them exactly every night and you will end up with these little happy accidents.” When asked whether he could ever imagine the band ditching the analogue hardware and touring with everything 'inside the box', Matt is adamant in his reply. "No, no way. If you've seen their studio… They've got the most amazing collection of equipment — think of a rare synth and it's in there — and the tactile nature of all that gear is a real key element of how they make their music. They've got three massive modular synths in the studio. I've seen Tom in there with a load of patch cords around his neck.

I think he's probably there all day just waiting for something to happen, then going, 'Ah brilliant, that sounds great!' Which is probably infinitely more fun than faffing around in front of a computer, just pressing buttons.” The long-serving Mackie desk is, however, nearing retirement, with a Toft Audio ATB32 console lined up to take its place, just as soon as the band have sufficient down-time to really get to grips with the new arrival. "Reliability is key when you're touring,” Matt says. "If you find a system that's reliable, especially when you're headlining stages like this, you're very reluctant to step away from it, unless you've got the rehearsal time to really iron it out and make sure it's bulletproof.” Synchronicity This trio are some of the most important elements of the live show. Bottom is an Elektron Monomachine; middle is a Behringer keyboard used to trigger sound effects, vocal samples, hits, sweeps and other 'ear candy' the band like to fire off on the fly, and top is the Roland Juno 106, routed through a guitar pedal. "They love that Boss Heavy Metal Distortion.

It's kind of the signature sound in 'Chemical Beats'. You bosh that over the 106 and it just sounds filthy — a horrible, dirty, angry thing.” Since hooking up with the Chemical Brothers in 1996, Matt Cox has seen their touring setup become steadily larger and more complex. "Every year the guys have turned up with a couple of new toys that they've obviously caned on the last album and said, 'Can we bolt this onto the setup?' So we scratch our heads and think, 'Where are we going to fit this one in?'” The hardware mixer has always been central to the rig, but as more gear has been piled around it, Matt has had to contrive ever more involved means of keeping it all in sync. "Back then [in 1996] it was a 16-channel Mackie [mixer] with a couple of analogue keyboards and a [Roland SH]101, and an [Akai] MPC that was the kind of brain of the whole thing. That grew on the next tour to a few more samplers and a few more keyboards.

After that, we started to use [Tascam] DA38 [digital multitrack tape] machines with a little bit of audio printed to them, plus timecode to run the MPC, so that kept the MIDI and audio in time with one another. And then from there it went to [Akai] DR16 hard-disk recorders for playback, again with some audio printed from the Logic file. That drove SMPTE, which drove an MPC, which drove the MIDI gear and held the MIDI and audio elements together. "It's only this year that we've actually jumped to using laptops live. Tom programs in Logic anyway, so it makes a lot more sense and saves a lot of time — and during the tour he can go off and do an edit in the hotel room if he needs to. We stuck with hard-drive playback for a long time just because it was so reliable. Because the visual side is such a big part of the show, it's imperative that that timecode stream doesn't drop because the video is relying on it.

It's only in the last few years, I think, that you can really say that laptops are reliable enough to use, and there's now enough kit to create A/B systems and failsafes so that if one laptop crashes, it's not a show-stopper.” Whatever is driving the system, it is essential that the entire rig, from laptops to synths to effects, is perfectly in sync from the first beat to the last. "The MIDI clock is a massive part of the show because it runs the analogue sequencers on stage,” says Matt. "We've got a [Future Retro] 777 squelch box, which is a [Roland] TB303-style machine, that runs on clock. All of the effects in the rack are MIDI-clocked as well, so as we get tempo changes through the set, all the delays and filter sweeps and phases are tempo-locked to what's going on.” It all starts with the Logic laptop, which generates the timecode signal used to coordinate the video and lighting — so crucial to the show as a whole — and syncs a mirrored back-up Logic laptop, as well as a third laptop running Ableton Live.

The Logic arrangement also generates the MIDI clock signal sent to the on-stage setup. "One of the real challenges is keeping everything in time for an hour and a half,” Matt explains. "It's not like you press play for a two-minute song and at the end of it you press stop. Once you've pressed go, that's it. It's got to stay in time for an hour and a half, otherwise the whole thing sounds like it's falling downstairs. Everything will wander. That's why we rely on the Sync-Lock boxes.” One of Matt's biggest challenges is keeping everything in sync, a task greatly facilitated by this little box. These ingenious devices from Australian outfit Innerclock Systems are designed to solve the problems that can be encountered when trying to use a software DAW and external analogue gear side by side. In place of a Firewire or USB MIDI interface, the Sync-Gen II LE system consists of a plug-in that generates an audio pulse, which is sent from the audio interface to the external Sync-Lock unit (looking a bit like a DI box), which in turn generates the MIDI clock.

With the conventional audio material and the audio pulse sent side by side, the result is a stable, jitter-free, sample-accurate clock signal precisely in time with the audio coming out of Logic. From Matt's station at the side of the stage, where he keeps an eye on the three Macbook Pro laptops during the show, the MIDI clock signal goes to a Kenton LNDR MIDI line driver so it can be sent via Ethernet cable to the on-stage setup. There, it's routed via a MOTU MIDI patchbay to all relevant devices on stage. The Sync-Gen system has another key advantage, as Matt explains: "The nature of MIDI clock is that, once you've pressed go, there's no way of re-triggering that signal. If you're generating clock from Logic and, say, one of the drum machines gets turned off by mistake, if you turn that back on you can't re-trigger it, because there's no kind of re-trigger message in the MIDI clock format. "The good thing about the Sync-Lock box is that it allows you to do that. Basically, there are two audio signals being fed into the Sync-Lock.

You have the plug-in that runs in the background and sends the audio pulse, and then you have a little audio file that you drop in your arrangement, which sends a 'go' command to the Sync-Lock box. I've got this little audio file pasted right the way through the arrangement, so if at any point during the set the clock goes pear-shaped, I can just unmute it to send the signal to the Sync-Lock to regenerate the clock. "So that's become essential to running an hour-and-a-half gig, where it's got to work from top to bottom. It's a bit different to working with a conventional band, where the band can say, 'Sorry, we've messed that up, let's just start that song again from the beginning.' We haven't got that option.” A Day In The Life Preparation is everything, according to Matt Cox, and in the case of the Chemical Brothers, that starts long before the first tour date. "I go to Tom's studio way before the tour and we do a lot of transfers from Logic,” he explains. "Then we'll get in a room with the kit for quite a long time and just run it to iron out the problems.

After that, it's taken to a big room with the full video and lighting rig for another week. Once we've done that and we're happy with everything, we hit the road.” When I meet Matt Cox backstage at the Creamfields festival, it's 2pm and the first act are preparing to take to the main stage. The Chemical Brothers are, naturally, headlining and not due on until 9.30pm, but Matt and his colleagues have been here since 8am, assembling and soundchecking the band's mammoth live setup, which now sits off-stage on a riser under a purpose-built, waterproof covering nicknamed 'the greenhouse'. According to Matt, this kind of early start is unavoidable when top of the bill, but it's still preferable to the alternative. "We've been closing or headlining shows for a while now,” he says, "which definitely makes life a bit easier. I'd rather that than be turning up at the 11th hour and throwing it all up. As well as all the gear on the audio side, there's so much lighting and video involved.

Everything has to be set up, soundchecked and tested in one block, so you've either got to go in really early the day of the show, to be finished before the first band comes on, or do it the night before after the last band has finished.” With everything ready and waiting in the wings, Matt can retire to the tour bus and relax until a few hours before showtime. Then it's back to work. "I'll come back two-and-a-half or three hours before the show, de-rig the greenhouse and turn everything back on again, just to let all the old gear bed in, just so the tunings don't go bonkers. That's something else we've had to deal with. If those synths are nice and warm in a corner, then you wheel them out on stage, you've got to be really careful. They're just so moody sometimes! I'll quickly check everything again just before Tom and Ed come on stage and make sure the tunings are all right, otherwise you can be a semitone or more out.” For all of Matt's careful preparation, the final minutes before the show can still get pretty intense.

"Sometimes we only get a 20-minute changeover following the previous band, and five to 10 minutes of that is taken up by them getting off stage,” he explains. "So you've literally got to wheel it out, plug in your looms and make sure everything is up and running. That can be quite pressurising sometimes, to test every single bit of kit up there, know that it's working and then say, 'Yeah, we're ready to go.' Because when it goes, it's got to go right.” With the show done and dusted, it's time to pack up and move on, and that means dismantling the entire stage setup. "It would be great if all those keyboards just sat on those frames and you could just put a big lid over it and say, 'See you same time tomorrow!' Unfortunately it's not like that. It's broken down completely [between shows]. All of those keyboards need to be really well cased because they've got to travel, so everything goes in big trunks. We try to look after it all, because analogue stuff is notoriously moody. There's two of us that set the kit up.

I do the programming side of it and Aaron [Cripps, the backline tech] looks after the maintenance side of it. On occasion there are components that need to be swapped out, so out comes the soldering iron.” Staying Live In emergency, hit the red button... With just a few dates left in the Chemical Brothers' calendar, Matt Cox is looking ahead to his next tour of duty, as programmer-cum-MIDI and keyboard technician for alternative rockers Snow Patrol. After no more than a couple of days off, he's straight into rehearsals with the band, then on a plane to South America for festivals in Brazil and Argentina. There's no rest for the wicked, but Matt is in no hurry to return to a more sedentary, studio-bound life. "Coming in after an album's been finished and taking it from that point into the live world is where I'm at now,” he says. "I find it quite satisfying actually, because there's still an element of the studio side of things at the beginning of that process — programming, and being set up in a room with the band — but then you get to take it out on the road at the end of that. It's pretty cool.

"I like the instantness of the live thing as well. In the studio, you can spend a day just trying to get a kick drum right. Live, I like the fact that when there's a problem, you've got to solve it really quick. Everything just moves all the time. If something breaks in the studio, you'll be on the phone trying to get hold of a bloke to come and fix it. If it breaks here, you've got to do it yourself. So you end up picking up loads of little nuggets of information. I like being able to say, 'Oh right, I've just learned something new today.'” Standing in the rain, in a muddy field surrounded by the trucks, temporary shelters and walkie-talkie-toting security personnel you'll find at any festival, it strikes me that the job of a touring tech is perhaps not a million miles away from Cox's former life as an army signaller. "There's loads of similarities — it's weird,” he laughs. "You've got your tour itinerary, which is like your orders. You get your stuff, put it on a bit of transport and trundle off to the middle of nowhere.

You set it up, do what you've got to do for a day and then off you go again. When I first started touring, I thought, 'You know what? I could get into this.'” For more about Matt Cox's work, visit his web site at . Interview with the Chemical Brothers (NY Rock) Tom Rowlands, Ed Simons Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons met in history class at Manchester University in 1988. The two immediately got along and soon began scouting out the citys active nightclub scene. Not content with the popular house music at the time, they began DJaying themselves. As a tribute to the American Dust Brothers, they initially called themselves Dust Brothers, but later changed the name to Chemical Brothers when the Dust Brothers threatened to sue. In 1995, the duo released their acclaimed debut, Exit Planet Dust. Two years later came Dig Your Own Hole, and now theyre back with Surrender. NYROCK: It's been quite a while. What have you guys been up to? TOM: A bit of this and a bit of that... The usual stuff, you know.

ED: A bit of fighting, a bit of remixing, a few dramas, the usual stuff that happens when you know each other for over ten years. NYROCK: Ten years is a long time. Since you're still friends I guess it hasn't been too bad... ED: We grew up together and we need our drama, makes us work better... TOM: We grew up? When? I must have missed that completely. Grown up? That sounds scary. I don't want to grow up. NYROCK: Lets get back to the drama. Drama sounds good. What was it all about? TOM: We had so many ideas for this record, so many different strands and different things we wanted to do. Sometimes it was too much and we squabbled about it. Nothing really serious, more like outbursts. ED: Two different people, two different ideas, but that's good. It causes some friction sometimes, but that helps the creative process. NYROCK: I'm puzzled by how you got started? It seems like you went from DJs to stars. I imagine your original material helped a lot. ED: I don't really see us as stars.

I still see us as DJs trying to give people a good time. TOM: That's the whole deal. The whole idea of being a DJ is working a club and making people dance, making people enjoy themselves and dance their bootie off. We still enjoy doing that. Putting it on an album isn't much different. We're trying to do the same stuff we do at live gigs: Giving people a good time. ED: Tom and I always DJ together. TOM: We still get our inspirations from DJaying. We get a lot of new impulses and it's a good way to check new tracks in clubs, if people like it, if it's club compatible. ED: Dance music is something that grips you. It forces you to dance. Resistance is futile, ha ha. TOM: We don't want to be rock stars and stuff. We like getting our music out; we like sharing our music; we love playing. We make these albums which can be enjoyed by a lot of people and that's great. NYROCK: Is it difficult working together all the time? Small wonder you have some friction... ED: It works for us. TOM: We always do it together. We don't work apart.

We have one studio, one computer, one desk and all the music you hear is written between us. We're always writing and recording because we have our own studio and we go in there every day. ED: We work on tracks but there's an album somewhere in the back of it all. NYROCK: You guys won a Grammy for "Best Rock Instrumental"... TOM: (snorts) Best Rock Instrumental, yeah. It's kind of amazing what they come up with. Best Rock Instrumental, oh please. They really were looking hard for a label or a drawer to stick us in... ED: Oh well, we took the Grammy anyway, so what the hell. NYROCK: In the early stages of your career the Dust Brothers threatened to sue if you didn't change your name. Now they've remixed one of your tracks... TOM: Yeah, that was some shock. We loved them, admired them. That's why we called ourselves Dust Brothers and when they threatened to sue we were shattered. ED: Yes, but now that they remixed one of our tracks and we remixed one of their tracks everything is fine. It's a great compliment, after all they were our heros and our inspiration.

NYROCK: You are pretty well known for your remixes. Have you had your eye on the scene? Anything you particularly liked? TOM: I quite liked the stuff the Microbots did. That really impressed me. Or the Pole album, a lot of effect with really simple methods, that's great. ED: The Dirt Chamber sessions are also great. TOM: Yes, but Liam Howlett , come on, the guy is a genius. NYROCK: On Surrender you worked with Noel Gallagher again. It seems like a steady collaboration between the Chemicals and Oasis... TOM: It's fun working with Noel, really fun. He's a good sport. ED: Noel's really cool. When we asked him to do it, he said yes and just came round and did it in a day. TOM: It was a lot of fun. We had fun and I think it comes across on the album. I think he likes it because it's so different from putting together an Oasis album. It's something else for him. NYROCK: You had quite a number of guest musicians, Noel, Bernard Sumner and Hope Sandoval. What was it like working with them?

TOM: It was different with each and everyone of them, Bernard Sumner and Noel and Hope Sandoval. They are far apart from each other. But our sound is so strong and so defined that it can really take on these different things, without sounding watered down or losing it. NYROCK: You guys seem to be a bit nervous. Did I ask the wrong questions? ED: TOM: Champions League, Man United... PS: The team Manchester United won. It looks like the Chemical brothers are always on the winning side. July 1999 Ed Simons has left the Chemical Brothers' live show | Dummy Mag Shop Ed Simons has left the Chemical Brothers’ live show Tom Rowlands will pilot the Chems' live shows solo from now on, although he and Ed are "still very much together" as a music-making duo. Published: 17/11/14 Ed Simons has left The Chemical Brothers ' live show in order to focus on his "academic pursuits".

The Chemical Brothers are DJing at the Bugged Out Weekender in January, and before their set Simons has given the clubbing institution a short interview revealing their plans for their next album and their live shows - which will be a solo project from Tom Rowlands. "I know Tom and Adam [Smith, visuals and director of the Don’t Think concert film] are working on a brand new look for the show," Simons says, "I have committed to academic pursuits over the last few years so I won’t be able to be part of the live show. It’s been a really difficult decision but it doesn’t work for me to be away from home for the periods of time touring requires." "Tom is continuing with the live show, he wants to take this music to the people," he continues, "It will be the same big production, with Adam’s amazing visuals and the studio set up on stage but I won’t be part of it. The academic work I’m continuing with is too meaningful for me to break from right now.

I’m really excited to see how the new show looks and on the plus side, one day I will get to see a Chemical Brothers show from the audience’s perspective." Although he's departed the live show, Simons makes it clear that he and Rowlands will continue DJing and making music together: "We’re still very much together and making this record together and DJing together. The touring just doesn’t fit alongside my academic work." Speaking of their forthcoming album, Simons says that it "sounds incredible", is full of "far-out electronic music", and will be out "next year". The Chemical Brothers (DJ set) headline the Bugged Out Weekender on January 17th 2015 ( more information and tickets ). Interview: The Chemical Brothers | Music | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close As Ed Simons knows only too well, the Chemical Brothers have something of an image problem. When the topic comes up, his face takes on an expression somewhere between pain and bemusement. And well it might. In the past eight years, Simons, 32, and partner Tom Rowlands, 31, have amassed an enviable list of achievements.

The Chemical Brothers have presided over one of the most celebrated British clubs in history. Their four startling albums have broken new ground and invented new genres, and been rewarded with number-one singles and a Grammy (bizarrely, Block Rockin' Beats snatched the 1998 gong for Best Rock Instrumental). Their live shows have transcended the usual presentational dilemmas faced by electronic dance acts, offering a stark, dramatic and mind-blowing son et lumière experience to wild acclaim. Their appearance at Glastonbury 2000 drew the largest crowd in the festival's history. They have sold more than 6m albums and their 2001 single It Began in Afrika may well be the most wilfully extreme and experimental piece of music ever to make the Top 10. However, as Simons says, glowering: "The nerdy-guy myth is pretty well-travelled." Simons is by nature a worrier. A smoker since the age of 13, he admits to "sitting here stinging" over the handful of criticisms in the largely positive reviews of their fourth album, Come With Us.

But there is certainly truth in his view that the Chemical Brothers are largely viewed as "nerdy squares" by the media. Delight is taken in the duo's uneventful middle-class upbringings in Henley-on-Thames (Rowlands) and South London's Herne Hill (Simons). Much is made of their past as students. They met while studying medieval literature at Manchester university - an early single was titled 14th Century Sky, in tribute to their love of the period. Both specialised in Chaucer. Despite the evenings they spent DJ-ing and exploring cheap "loony soup" lager and amyl nitrate, both scored 2:1s. "We weren't into the just-getting-by ethic at all," says Simons, his voice tinged with suspicion when their studiousness is mentioned. "We did history and some people treated it as a joke, something you could just do two weeks before the exams started. We treated it as something we really enjoyed and got a lot out of. It's the same with making our records now.

It's what we do, so we work really hard at it." It's not just their past that leads people to assume the Chemical Brothers are a pair of aloof boffins. The most common adjective used to describe Rowlands and Simons is "diffident". Part of the problem is their dislike of that pop-star staple, discussing your personal life in interviews. Simons famously described such behaviour as "an odd way to carry on". Rowlands won't even countenance discussion of the lyrics he occasionally contributes to Chemical Brothers tracks. They chose their friend, folk singer Beth Orton, for the vocals on Come With Us's solitary ballad The State We're In because, says Rowlands: "I can't imagine saying to one of the other vocalists we've worked with, like Bernard Sumner or Noel Gallagher, 'These are the words for my song, can you sing it?' " Attempts to probe any further into the song's meaning are rebuffed with a silent, enigmatic smile. Eventually, you just give up and ask about something else. Further fuel has been added to the nerdy-guy myth. There's the suggestion that their closeness is a bit peculiar.

At a time when manufactured bands largely consist of hand-picked strangers, the duo claimed to have only spent two weeks of each year apart since meeting in 1989. They were flatmates for three years. These days, they live three streets apart in west London. Rowlands is married with a baby daughter and Simons is in a long-term relationship. Tellingly, both have a tendency to leave sentences hanging in mid-air, half-finished. Rowlands describes the harsh, percussive hammering of It Began in Afrika as "jungle noises... spaceships... future primitive". It's as if you should instinctively know what they mean. "If I'm in the studio working on my own, I can feel this kind of...presence," says Rowlands. "This Ed presence around me, looking over my shoulder, going: 'Oh, I don't know about that.'" "We don't really have an element of friction between us," says Simons. "We're friends, and our friendship is more important than the music that we make." He pauses.

"Some of the time." There are certainly a lot of in-jokes shared between them, but, in person, the Chemical Brothers hardly resemble an impenetrable and foreboding cabal. The duo are amiable, chatty, possessed of a dry wit and a keen sense of dance music's ridiculousness. Simons was tickled by a recent TV show featuring a DJ's rosy-hued recollections of minds being opened during 1988's Summer of Love: "Bricklayers used to come up and give him poetry while he was DJ-ing," he says. The only people Simons and Rowlands seem to have upset during their career are Boy George (who demonstrated his grasp of the Wildean bon mot by dubbing them "the cunt brothers") and a crowd at Ibiza's Space club, who were reduced to tears by a Chemicals DJ set. Nevertheless, some people express a sense of disappointment that Rowlands and Simons don't embody more of their music's characteristics. They forget that anyone who did embody the prevelant characteristics of an average Chemical Brothers record would be relentlessly aggressive, monstrously loud, overblown and under the influence of vast quantities of psychedelics.

Brian Blessed in a frothing, LSD-induced fury. Someone you'd spot a mile off, then cross the street to avoid. The last person you'd want to interview in a cafe at Westbourne Park in London at 11.30 on a Sunday morning. By contrast, Rowlands and Simons pass unnoticed as they sip their herbal tea. Their anonymity is slightly surprising. Aside from Keith Flint, the Prodigy's idiotically haired, extravagantly pierced, make-up-sporting frontman, the duo are probably dance music's most recognisable couple. Neither glamorous nor particularly nerdy, Simons and Rowlands still have something inexplicably striking about them. Recently, one music magazine reported that female Japanese fans felt the pair inspired "kawaii - the love one feels for small furry animals". As Julie Burchill once remarked of Slade guitarist Dave Hill, the Chemical Brothers have faces you are unlikely to forget. Rowlands is additionally memorable because he doesn't actually appear to have changed his clothes for the past eight years.

He may have finally divested himself of his long raver's tresses (a hairstyle he maintained long after even the most redoubtable raver had given it up as a bad job), but today, as every day, he sports slightly flared jeans, battered trainers and tinted spectacles. The duo's international success, their number-one singles, their increasing wealth - none of it has had any impact whatsoever on his wardrobe. Perhaps he has his mind on higher things. Rowlands and Simons claim that the way records like Come With Us sound - overloaded, crazed, saturated with distorted beats and psychedelic noises - has less to do with their own personalities or drug consumption than an ongoing desire to make the listener feel "overwhelmed by sound". When they start discussing their music's ability to "mess with your mind", they don't sound diffident at all. There's something of the mad scientist about their excited talk of concepts such as their bewildering "Turin Shroud Theory of Implied Music" ("It must have been a good afternoon when we came up with that one," nods Rowlands sagely), and their musical quest for transcendence.

"If you can sit in front of a computer in the studio and feel totally transported by the sound you're making, then that's the most fun there is to be had making music," says Rowlands. "Sometimes when we're onstage, playing a track like [1997 single] The Private Psychedelic Reel and it's really loud, you just don't feel that you're anything to do with this piece of music. It's just happening and you're holding onto the sound desk, going, 'Fucking hell!' It sounds like there's a plane going over your head. I don't feel, 'Wow, I've created this thing - I'm in an incredible position of power.' I'm just experiencing what the person in the audience who hasn't made the music is experiencing. It's all about giving me dem feelings." Listen to the audio clip (49secs) "We like doing it to ourselves," adds Simons, succinctly. Nevertheless, they have become used to their music's unpredictable effects on others.

The unfortunately coiffeured "world's fastest heavy metal guitarist" Joe Satriani sent them a cassette featuring him frantically soloing over one of their tracks ("I think that's one for the Chemical Brothers Anthology box set," says Rowlands). Then they received a puzzling video from former Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth "of himself, running around his house, getting up to no good, with one of our tunes in the background and him singing over the top of it". Even Roth's curious behaviour was topped by an Australian fan who calls himself Dan Rad. "He used to rap over our records and then send us the tapes," says Rowlands, shaking his head. "It was just him shouting all this obscene stuff. 'She tells me I'm listening to my music too loud so I say faack off yew baaah-sted! My eardrums are fackin' bleeding, yew drongo!' We haven't heard from him in a while, but we're going to Australia soon. Perhaps he could get onstage with us, do a bit of MC-ing." They may not look particularly mythic, but in the past eight years, that's exactly what the Chemical Brothers have become.

The story of their reign as DJs at the Heavenly Sunday Social - a club held in a packed, grubby Marylebone pub basement during the summer and autumn of 1994 - is enshrined in dance-music legend, and talked about in hushed and reverential tones. To have been present during their four-month residency is still a badge of honour, an e-generation equivalent of having seen the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club. Listen to the audio clip (1min 25) The Sunday Social's fabled reputation is partly due to the number of celebrities who turned up - Primal Scream, Tricky, the Stone Roses. There was something groundbreaking and thrilling about the music Rowlands and Simons played at the Sunday Social. Uniquely for the time, they were unconstrained by the rigid generic boundaries of dance music. Pounding acid techno was mixed in with old Beatles records, hip-hop, ska, the Manic Street Preachers - anything they felt would fit the mood of druggy abandon.

Rowlands and Simons were doing nothing more complicated than playing records they liked, but the results were refreshing, unpredicatable and kaleidoscopic: a mix that, for the first time, placed the notoriously insular world of dance music in a wider context. This filtered through into the Chemical Brothers' albums, which pitched unlikely guest vocalists against their unruly sound. Their debut, Exit Planet Dust, offered a collision of distorted hip-hop drums with techno effects and guitars. U2 guitarist the Edge claimed it was his favourite record of 1994. "It said, 'This is the way forward and what we should all be doing,'" commented Norman Cook, who later adopted its style to vast success as Fatboy Slim. Their second album, 1997's Dig Your Own Hole, featured Noel Gallagher on the number one single Setting Sun. It proved to be one of the most influential and pivotal albums of the 1990s, an evocation of the clubbing experience remarkable both for its musical breadth and its emotional depth. Dance music has always had problems expressing anything more profound than the earth-shattering notion that dancing and drugs are fun ("Not such bad things to say," smirks Simons).

But Dig Your Own Hole shifted from euphoria through numb nihilism to desperate melancholy. Like Rowlands's sartorial sense, it remains unchanged by time: no mean feat in the accelerated culture of dance music, where styles and genres are rendered obsolete overnight. Today, the venue of the Sunday Social is now a chain pub. More bizarrely, the boundaries between rock and dance, which the Chemical Brothers did as much as anyone to destroy, have been hastily erected once more. In Manchester, nu-metal-worshipping Moshers and garage-loving Scallies are involved in running battles around the city. Rock has returned to its workmanlike roots. Earthy, earnest musicianship in the early 1970s tradition is big again, and regards artists armed with samplers as deeply suspicious. Dance music, meanwhile, has greedily abandoned any pretence of innovation and become risibly frivolous and disposable: it is the province of DJ Alligator and Do You Really Like It?.

The Chemical Brothers may still express the desire to work with artists as disparate as Bob Dylan ("We got word back that he'd like a formal letter, telling him exactly what it would entail," Simons smiles) and US rappers Outkast, but elsewhere the twain no longer meet. In 2002, the only place you're likely to hear a rock star collaborating with a dance act is Come With Us, where trad-rocking Richard Ashcroft sings over wriggling beats on album-closer The Test. "There's no cross-pollination going on," agrees Simons. "The rock music that's big is so boring. The idea of us doing a Travis remix... what would that be?" "It would be pretty rubbish," says Rowlands. But if times have changed since the days of the Sunday Social, so have the Chemical Brothers. Their previous album, 1999's Surrender, contained tracks called Out of Control, Under the Influence and Got Glint?

- the latter being Rowlands and Simons' slang for "Were you out until 11 o'clock in the morning?" Despite the nerdy-guy myth, the strict work ethic and the aversion to celebrity hang-outs such as the Met Bar, the duo were well-known in the dance scene for their love of a hedonistic party. By contrast, amid the invigorating mayhem of tracks like My Elastic Eye and Galaxy Bounce, Come With Us features Richard Ashcroft plaintively moaning: "I almost lost my mind, but now I'm home and I'm free." If Rowlands looks exhausted during our Sunday meeting, it has less to do with druggy excess than the sleeping patterns of his six-month-old daughter, Matilda. It all sounds suspiciously as if the Chemical Brothers, like most clubbers when they reach their early 30s, are feeling domesticity dragging them away from the strobes and sound systems. "I really love the words about being home and being free," nods Simons. "For five solid years, I've gone out every Friday night in some form or another, but now if 10 o'clock on a Friday night rolls around and there's nothing on, I'm in for the night.

I think both of us feel out of that trap, where we have to be out every night. It's not everybody's idea of freedom, sitting around at home, but for me it is. There's a tyranny of going out. That track's called The Test because you do end up wondering if it's some kind of test you were putting yourself through." Rowlands continues: "It's the only test that this generation has, really. People need to go through a rite of passsage and because there isn't national service or something anymore, you build your own thing. It sounds stupid, but it's true." Listen to the audio clip (57secs) We live in an era when club attendance figures are plummeting and the chill-out album reigns supreme. But if Rowlands and Simons are feeling the lure of the sofa, where does that leave their brand of punishing dancefloor psychedelia? Does their future hold nothing but odes to the simple pleasures of family life? Simons snorts. "Nah. We still like to stand in the studio with the speakers on full pelt, listening to something that takes you back into that... " Characteristically, his sentence tails off.

Rowlands takes up the challenge: "When you're in a club and you hear a record for the first time, you get excited, the music overtakes you. That feeling is what I like about music. If you feel that way, other people feel like that as well... " Aware his partner is rapidly running out of steam, Simons steps in again: "Just feeling absorbed by sound, giving in to it, feeling unselfconcious about dancing, feeling emotion triggered by the way a track's going." He looks at Rowlands and frowns. "Am I talking out of turn?" "No," says Rowlands quietly. "I think you're talking perfect sense." You can hear songs from the new album and see the Chemical Brothers' new video at Official Site | LA Times: Chemical Brothers Found Hanna “Liberating” | Latest News & Press | Hanna | Focus Features LA TIMES: CHEMICAL BROTHERS FOUND HANNA “LIBERATING” Posted by Peter Bowen | April 19, 2011 Los Angeles Times' Steven Zeitchik in the movie blog " 24 Frames " checked in with The Chemical Brothers, the sonic pair behind the exhilarating soundtrack for Hanna.

The two were in Southern California to perform at Coachella, that mega concert in the desert. The duo, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, who make up the Chemical Brothers talked about the difference between creating an album and creating a soundtrack. "With us, we usually make the record and then kind of figure out what we have afterward," Rowlands told Zeitchik. But a soundtrack pushed them to approach the creative process differently. As Rowlands, explained: It was actually liberating. Normally we have 15 versions of a song and we're not sure which one to use. Here we might have had two or three versions, and Joe would come in and collaborate, set some parameters. A Flamenco-Playing Sitar and an Asymmetrical Groove - The New York Times The New York Times Music |A Flamenco-Playing Sitar and an Asymmetrical Groove Search Tom Rowlands, left, and Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers.

Credit Hamish Brown Anoushka Shankar The blood bond between flamenco and Indian music has received due acknowledgment over the years, usually in the form of either a mongrel insurgency, as in the Barcelona band Ojos de Brujo, or an enlightened spectacle, as in the guitarist Pepe Habichuela with the Bollywood Strings. “Traveller” (Deutsche Grammophon), a vividly realized new album by the sitarist Anoushka Shankar, fits the second category best, though its hybridism feels as natural as conversation. Working with the astute Spanish producer Javier Limón, Ms. Shankar has fashioned a program of original songs in chamberlike settings, blending traditions at every turn. Sometimes she works alongside a flamenco singer, like Duquende or Concha Buika; sometimes her sitar fulfills that role, with lines that slide expressively around a modal scale. There are moments of cultural frisson, like “Bulería con Ricardo,” featuring the pianist Pedro Ricardo Miño, and “Boy Meets Girl,” a duologue with Mr. Habichuela. And there’s at least one song that evokes Ms.

Shankar’s birthright: “Krishna,” with lyrics left to her by her father, Ravi Shankar, and sung by Shubha Mudgal. Fittingly, Ms. Shankar has taken “Traveller” on tour; her gypsy caravan will stop at City Winery from April 6 to 8. Photo Anoushka Shankar Credit Harper Smith/Deutsche Grammophon Steve Lehman Trio The alto saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman has earned a reputation for sure-footed futurism, notably with his sleek but audacious octet. “Dialect Fluorescent,” a trio effort due out on Pi on Tuesday, feels like an attempt to re-establish his grounding in the post-bop tradition, without backpedaling. The album features the bassist Matt Brewer and the drummer Damion Reid, and along with some smartly stuttering original pieces — including “Alloy,” repurposed from the octet playbook, in a starker, drier reading — it includes several tunes from the jazz repertory, presented without major reconstruction. The best-known of these is John Coltrane’s “Moment’s Notice,” outfitted with an asymmetrical groove.

“Jeannine,” by Duke Pearson, and “Mr. E,” by Mr. Lehman’s former mentor, Jackie McLean, adhere even closer to the source material, which serves as a springboard, sending the trio off in a swift trajectory, slicing through the air. Photo From left, Steve Lehman, Damion Reid and Matt Brewer. Credit Willie Davis Grégoire Maret A Swiss-born harmonica virtuoso and a serenely expressive melodist, Grégoire Maret is best known for sweetening the output of some of jazz’s biggest stars, like Cassandra Wilson, Pat Metheny and Herbie Hancock. His self-titled debut on eOne Music, is the sort of softly burnished, global pop-inflected effort you’d expect from him, with cameos by Ms. Wilson and the bassist Marcus Miller (another of his employers), and a tune from the repertory of the Pat Metheny Group. The album has a bit too much sheen, but its vision is strong: together with the pianist Federico Gonzalez Peña, his fellow producer-arranger, Mr.

Maret lays out an accessible but ambitious jazz cosmopolitanism , with a group featuring James Genus on bass and either Jeff (Tain) Watts or Clarence Penn on drums. And there’s an implicit claim of harmonica inheritance in the decision to cover Stevie Wonder (“The Secret Life of Plants”) and play a duet with Toots Thielemans (“O Amor e o Meu Pais”). Photo Daniel Rossen Credit Amelia Bauer Daniel Rossen The wry, doubt-clouded songs of Daniel Rossen have helped sustain a pair of Brooklyn indie bands, Grizzly Bear and Department of Eagles. He has five new ones on “Silent Hour/Golden Mile” (Warp), an EP recorded with minimal outside contribution. Their style — rhapsodic but cloistered, with acoustic guitars and muffled drums bathed in cavernous reverb — will ring familiar if you know his previous work. But there’s a unity of presence here that justifies the stand-alone release. Mr. Rossen’s lyrics, though cryptic, involve a lot of losing and finding, leaving and returning, and his calmly arresting singing carries the weight of a secret meant to be held close, even if its meaning is hazy.

Chemical Brothers Last month this powerhouse British electronic duo released a concert film, “The Chemical Brothers: Don’t Think,” to movie theaters in 25 cities worldwide. Directed by Adam Smith, the artist behind the group’s neo-psychedelic live visuals, it documents a performance at the Fuji Rock festival in Japan. The point of view stutters and swirls among the crowd, capturing young faces in thrall to the moment, euphoric or pumped or panicked. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, who make up the Chemical Brothers, are seen in silhouette, at a fair distance, dwarfed by spectacle. You see them as you would from the field, in a sea of human movement. It’s no wonder “Don’t Think” was released to theaters, where its sensory overload could meet with a communal experience. But even a solitary viewing of the DVD or Blu-ray, due out on Astralwerks on Monday, imparts a teeming feeling. A version of this article appears in print on March 25, 2012, on Page AR20 of the New York edition with the headline: A Flamenco-Playing Sitar And an Asymmetrical Groove. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Question: Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons make up what duo?
Answer: The Chemical Brothers