OTR: The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons - better known as The Chemical Brothers - released their second album, Dig Your Own Hole on April 7^th, 1997. My copy was given to me sometime in 2010 as a "thank you" for my attempt at doing some audio restoration work for a friend.

The duo of Rowlands and Simons got together when both relocated to Manchester, England. The former has noted that he did so mostly because Manchester is the city where the Haçienda nightclub was located. Indeed, while you can hear echoes of New Order and The Happy Mondays in the music, there's also a heavy slab of rock and hip hop piled on. Lead track and single "Block Rockin' Beats" includes a sample from Schooly D's "Gucci Again."

Despite that, when I opened the CD booklet for this album, I immediately thought that the design was somewhat reminiscent of the photos and artwork inside of New Order's 1993 LP Republic.

Unlike later releases where most if not all of the songs would have a definite beginning and end, Dig Your Own Hole is like spending an hour at the club. From "Block Rockin' Beats" through "Piku," all of the tracks run together. Unless one is watching the countdown on the CD player, there is no telling when one song has ended and the next one begun.

"Setting Sun," which features Oasis' Noel Gallagher on vocals (sampled from their song "Half the World Away") gets its own little space on the disc. Not surprising as it was released as a single. It is also far more interesting to listen to than anything Oasis ever released. If ever there was a band who didn't know how to quit when they were ahead, it was Oasis; they are one of the few groups where their single edits are better than the album cuts simply by virtue of the fact that they had the bad habit of doubling the length of what could have been tight pop songs into seven or eight minutes of maddening droning, noodling or feedback. Memo to Oasis: you are neither Catherine Wheel nor Sonic Youth; you do not have the artistic aptitude to make feedback and fuzz interesting or appealing. This is why you needed The Chemical Brothers to take anything any of your members had put to tape and make it interesting. Go back to beating the shit out of each other on stage, Gallagher brothers - it's more worth the ticket price than watching your band play - fucking wankers.

Ahem...

After "Setting Sun," with the start of "It Doesn't Matter," we get back into club mode what with the tracks all running together. The last of two tracks of that set, "Don't Stop the Rock" and "Get On Up It Like This" include a sample of a song written by Quincy Jones, "Money Runner," released in 1972. However, the version of "Money Runner" actually sampled is a cover by John Schroeder which was released that same year.

With "Lost in the K-hole," things get big beat sexy for four minutes and then the proceedings become folksy and understated with a looped violin sample marking the beginning of "Where Do I Begin." Beth Orton's vocals then come in, marking her second collaboration with the duo (the first was on "Alive Alone" on Exit Planet Dust). She'd lend her voice to another Chemical Brothers track five years later. Prior to this, she'd worked with William Orbit on four of his song productions, most notably "Water From a Vine Leaf."

Over it's nearly seven minutes one barely notices things becoming less organic and more mechanical in "Where Do I Begin," as the violin loop fades, replaced with a distorted, grinding synth. The song ends on one sustained mechanical synth note with fades as if it had been produced by an acoustic instrument. Then the Chemical Brothers take us from quiet to loud all over again with the closer, "The Private Psychedelic Reel." At nine and a half minutes, featuring a looped sitar sample and one of the few uses of clarinet in popular music that I can recall, the duo is pretty much saying, "we're closing our set in a BIG way." As it should be.