Chemical Brothers Get Busy
After wrapping up their world tour with a stop at the V2002
festival in Chelmsford, England, Britain’s Chemical Brothers are
wasting no time getting back to the studio to begin work on the
follow up to 2002’s Come With Us. “We don’t muck about,”
one half of the outfit, Ed Simons, said. “Our studio is in Elephant
and Castle in South London and we reconvene Monday to start again.
I’ve got a month before I get married, and I’m gonna spend that
month thinking about how we’re going to move forward musically.”
The Chems, however, are not feeling much pressure to follow up
the acclaimed Come With Us. “We don’t see any reason why
every time you go into the studio and start writing music you can’t
go and make the best music we’ve ever made,” Simons says. “We don’t
feel limited at all. We feel we can do it all again and make it
something great.”
Although the group has worked with a string of well-known
artists in the past, including members of Oasis, New Order and the
Verve, they are considering using unknown vocalists for the new
project. “I think it’d be great to find someone — to get someone
strange out of Rough Trade Records and pursue it from there rather
than work with these big iconic [figures],” says Simons. “I loved
working with Richard Ashcroft, Noel Gallagher and Bernard Sumner,
but it’d just be cool to do someone people have never heard
of.”
While the duo has put remix offers on hold, they are considering
two job opportunities in a production capacity, one with Blur, the
other with Jeff Beck. “They want us to listen to some music they’re
making with the possibility of producing or co-producing with
them,” Simons said of Blur. Beck is also seeking Simons and his
partner Tom Rowlands’ help on material for his follow-up to last
year’s You Had It Coming. Beck has also invited the
Chemical Brothers to appear among the special guests at his
three-night stand at London’s Royal Festival Hall, September 12-14.
The concerts will spotlight the guitarist’s thirty-five-year
career, from the Yarbirds to the present.