Pounding the beat

Are the Chemical Brothers losing their juice?

by Amy Finch

Repetitious music need not equal Chinese water torture. Rhythms that curve around in circles can zap that spot in the brain that tells the body to move. In a dance club, it's the cheapest drug to get people content and churning. In real life -- away from the commotion and the 10-ton sound system -- who wants to get pounded into madness by an unchanging beat?

The Chemical Brothers' 1995 debut, Exit Planet Dust (Caroline/Astralwerks), was amazing because it begged to be listened to, not just moved to. Nearly every song on the disc grew from a single small rhythm that kept mutating, smoothly, into a related pattern. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, the two Brits who are the Chemical Brothers, professed a deeper concern for sound than melody in a recent Option magazine interview, yet Exit Planet Dust had a cohesion and symmetry that said otherwise.

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Chemical Brothers
Chemical Brothers discography

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Exit Planet Dust got a lot of attention because it used the mechanics of techno music -- the sampling, the chunky hip-hop-style beats -- to engineer an attack closer to old-fashioned rock and roll than what you'd expect from a mountain of machines. That the Chemical Brothers are viewed as heavies in the ongoing techno/electronica trend is funny given that most people probably know of them via "Leave Home," that meaty slice of guitar heaven (Rowlands and Simons play their own instruments, then sample them), or the single "Setting Sun," the twirly, sitar-driven number set off by the vocals of Oasis's Noel Gallagher.

Dig Your Own Hole (Astralwerks/Caroline), the Chemical Brothers' second full-length CD (out this Tuesday), arrives with perfect timing. Electronica is enjoying a rash of press coverage -- it's being hailed as nothing less than the future of popular music. Oldies like Eric Clapton, David Bowie, and U2 are getting caught up in marrying technology and sound, and some younger outfits are beginning to make a commercial dent: the Prodigy, Aphex Twin, Tricky, Underworld, the Orb, Orbital.

Of that group, the Chemical Brothers seemed best equipped to dive into the mainstream. After all, they knew how to please sensibilities trained to crave something more solid than airy ambiance or compressed thumping. Too bad Dig Your Own Hole won't satisfy that craving; the disc is nowhere near as varied or compelling as Exit Planet Dust. Some of it will be a decent success with the dance crowd, but much of it is tedious and downright irritating. This is not the kind of music that pulls you into its patterns the way Exit Planet Dust did. That album rarely felt uninspired or erratic. Dig Your Own Hole is a mishmash of redundant noises, a study in monotony apt to drive you out of the room. (Come back a few minutes later and you won't have missed much.)

It all starts auspiciously enough, with the single "Block Rockin' Beats," which suggests that the Brothers are gonna work it out once again. Gangsta rapper Schoolly D provides the vocals -- pretty much just the title over and over -- and the song generates a fair degree of brawny fervor. Like much of Exit, "Block Rockin' Beats" circles around one rhythmic core and then starts to branch out in related designs.

But Dig Your Own Hole just doesn't stand up to an attentive listen. Although musical monotony is easy enough to pass off late at night in a dance club, it's not something you're apt to develop a daytime craving for. Electronica might eventually rearrange the face of commercial radio, but if Dig Your Own Hole is a believable preview, it won't provide a whole lot of personality. When the disc isn't taking one basic motif and drilling it into infinity, it's fashioning songs on aimless pitter-patterings that weren't memorable the first time.

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons haven't lost all sense of invention. A pair of songs at the end echo Exit Planet Dust by starting with a strong melody line and modulating it in ways that suggest motion. "Where Do I Begin?" features the lovely vocals of Beth Orton (a veteran Chemical Brother guest). The number traces a gentle acoustic path for a few minutes before radiating into a fluid symphony of techno-rhythms that echoes the original theme and avoids tedium altogether. That song bleeds into "The Private Psychedelic Reel," which expresses its title nicely through more than nine minutes of sitar-fed propulsion. Here, for once, is a sound that begs to be listened to and moved to.

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Chemical Brothers
Chemical Brothers discography

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