God, it's like I'm a new student at a school and the teacher just asked me to introduce myself to the class!
Hello! My name is Peter and I live in a rural town in Queensland, Australia, where the internet is bad enough that I thought I'd better get a physical copy of Born in The Echoes via mail. Unfortunately, this means I still haven't got the bloody thing and am slowly going insane!
I've been lurking on the forums for a few years now, and I first heard the chemical brothers around 2010/2011 when I was 12 and Further was still new. My taste in music hadn't really been defined yet, so I wasn't sure what to make of it. Obviously, I found it all to be quite insane, and just stuck to listening to Horse Power and the Daft Punk songs I was already into. But I guess there was something about the album that intrigued me, cause I kept being drawn back to it. I think a large part of it was the sensation of the album, It was so ethereal, like nothing I'd ever heard before. It didn't sound like the techno or dance music I was familiar with. I didn't know what the hell I was listening to or what it was doing to my brain, but one by one, I fell in love with every song on the album.
From that point on, I knew I wanted more, and I ended up going through their discography in a really weird way: in reverse order.
I guess it was because Further was their most recent work, so I figured the more recent stuff must be better than their older stuff. After I heard We Are The Night and Push The Button, I was pretty much exclusively listening to Chemical Brothers. After I heard Come With Us and Surrender, Don't Think was released, so it was the first time I heard tracks from the first two albums, like Setting Sun and Block Rockin Beats, and also the first time I got see the majesty of Chemical Brothers live. It was mind blowing! It was also the first time I paid money for Chemical Brothers (gimme a break I was a kid
). But I still wasn't sure if I wanted to listen to the first two albums. Each time I ventured into an album, I felt like I was taking a risk. I wasn't sure if the Chemical Brothers were always good, and it would be almost heartbraking if I found I didn't like an album. I was so relieved each time I got an album and discovered it was awesome too, but I had a feeling that wouldn't be the case with the first two. I'd heard other big beat from around the same era, like Fatboy Slim and the Prodigy, and I thought it was all obnoxious crap. It sounds silly when I think back, but I was really nervous when I got Dig Your Own Hole, I was kinda scared to start it. I decided to pick a song at random as a little taste, just to get an idea of what I was about to listen to. I picked The Private Psychedelic Reel. How fucking lucky is that!? I still think their more recent work is better than their old work, but I can happily say that the Chemical Brothers have never dissapointed me. Well, maybe This Is Not A Game...
Anyway, sorry for the rant. When I started typing this, I didn't realise it was gonna be so long. Oh well.
I hope I didn't come off as too starry-eyed. The Chemical Brothers are still my favourite band, but don't listen to them exclusively anymore. It's because of them that I've gotten into bands like Justice and the Beatles. I don't know what's gonna happen to the Chems after BITE, but I don't think I'll ever stop listening to their music.
Cheers.
