KEY POINTS:
You'd think the Chemical Brothers would have grown up and stopped going out all night after 15 years of partying. Yet on latest album We Are the Night, they pretty much declare themselves the deities of after dark.
And, not to be ageist or anything, but since they're
both in their late 30s it's quite clear they're on something as they wouldn't be able to stay up all night without assistance.
The album has The Salmon Song, on first impression a cute anthem for kindergarten kids, but dig deeper and psychedelic and hallucinatory influences abound.
"Yeah, it's a kids' song with references to smoking crack," jokes Ed Simons, who with Tom Rowlands makes up the Chemical Brothers, who play Vector Arena on February 28.
"The song has divided people, because it could be a bit whimsical for the Chemical Brothers, but we like it," he says.
Whimsical. Now there's a great word to describe the song, which features a rant by Fat Lip, a former member of US hip-hop outfit The Pharcyde.
"We had this piece of music, it was kind of off the wall. We had the chorus done and we were looking for something to hang it around and we sent it to Fat Lip and it must've been a good night around the Discovery Channel because he came up with this thing about the salmon."
That's right, Ed, blame the hip-hop artist.
We're making Simons and Rowlands out to be psychedelic pill-popping party animals when really they're not. For superstar DJs they maintain a low profile, with Simons living in a well-to-do part of London and Rowlands outside the city, "in the forest".
However, there's no doubt what trip they want their music to take people on.
"It's great turning up in cities around the world and just bringing a party to the town," says Simons. "One of the most enjoyable things of what we do is the feeling that we've arrived and people are away from their laptops and TVs for the evening and going out."
Partying and clubbing was how Simons and Rowlands became friends and formed a musical partnership in the early 90s.
Their first big break came in 1992 when they pressed 500 vinyl copies of the track Song To The Siren, which sampled the This Mortal Coil song of the same name, and sent a copy to influential London DJ Andy Weatherall, who made it a staple in his club sets.
That song, and tracks like Leave Home and In Dust We Trust, were standouts on the duos classic 1995 debut Exit Planet Dust.
Along with Fatboy Slim, the Chems made big beat one of the biggest dance music crazes to happen during the 90s, and following 1997's Dig Your Own Hole they became one of the biggest and most recognisable dance acts around. "I think if we're seen together and we're carrying a record box people know us," laughs Simons.
Despite a few ho-hum albums, most notably 2005's Push The Button, the Chemical Brothers have been reasonably consistent.
"We're not on some kind of treadmill of putting out records, because we only put them out when there's something exciting about them. Our inspiration comes from deep in our imaginations."
Thanks in large part to the video for The Salmon Song, We Are the Night has become one of their most popular albums since 1999's Surrender (the song Hey Boy, Hey Girl of that album had an equally memorable video with dancing and fornicating skeletons).
"In comparison to Push the Button this record feels a little bit looser, a little bit more psychedelic, and a bit more joyous really. But we don't really sit down and have long conversations about where we're going. We just get into the studio and make music.
"So at the core of this album is making something that has a groove but not completely tied down by the restraints of dance music. It's kind of like a Kraut, rocky thing, yet we play it in clubs and it still works."
The best examples of this are the title track, a typically pulsing and sonically soaring epic that you can almost certainly expect to hear first at Vector this month, and the glitchy fuzz of Saturate.
They create the live show the same way they always have, with the bouncing and bobbing pair behind a wall of synthesisers and a "laptop at the heart of everything". But the secret ingredients are the synths they use.
"We take a lot of the very old analogue keyboards on tour. They may only make one sound these days, because they're so battered and bruised having travelled around the world five times, but they still make a sound that sounds really good when it's loud through those big speakers. So it's a combination of cutting-edge technology and lots of keyboards that are virtually broken but make a good sound when the time is right."
In contrast to previous Chemical Brothers shows, where the latest album was mixed up with a healthy dose of old songs, the Auckland concert will be dominated by We Are the Night.
"This time we just feel we've made an album and for a band that's been around a long time its easy to throw in a couple of new tracks and just rely on the old ones. We put out our first album 12 years ago and there was a time when the audiences were kind of getting older.
"But looking around now there seems to be those whose experience of our music are the last two albums and I'm quite glad to leave that nostalgia feeling behind, because we had music that was big in the 90s but we've made music this century that's every bit as exciting."
So there will still be some block rockin' beats at Vector, just not as many old ones.
Lowdown
Who: The Chemical Brothers
Line-up: Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands
Where & when: Vector Arena, February 28
Essential albums: Exit Planet Dust (1995); Dig Your Own Hole (1997); Come With Us (2002)
Latest album: We Are the Night (2007)
