THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS — aka Manchester-based electronic pioneers Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands — had a clear vision in mind when they started work on their tenth album, For That Beautiful Feeling, the winner of The Album Award, supported by Brooklands Studio. “We really wanted to embrace the idea of speaking very directly through music, because sometimes it’s obscured quite a lot and scared of a big emotion,” says Rowlands, as he and Simons speak to Rolling Stone UK backstage before their Birmingham Arena show.
Having said that, the pair didn’t consciously intend to channel a particular set of ideas. Instead, they came naturally because of the time in which the record was made — during the first Covid-19 lockdown. Simons describes that period as “a strange time”. “Whether it was the fear that came up, the pause in people’s lives, or the loss, it’s in there somewhere,” he says of the songs that resulted from it.
Although the pair didn’t set out to reflect that period in their music, a variety of emotions runs through many of the album’s tracks. While Simons recognises that everyone had vastly different experiences of lockdown, there was one shared feeling: “missing the flow of life”. He thinks that “coming back into a relationship with your life and with other people as it was” is something that people are still getting to grips with, even now. While this isn’t a concept, he says that denying such influences, albeit subconscious ones, would be “strange and soulless”.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December/January 2024-Ausgabe von Rolling Stone UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December/January 2024-Ausgabe von Rolling Stone UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
BACK TO THE GRIND
The Clipse broke up when a spiritual path called to one of the brothers from Virginia. Now, one of the greatest duos in rap returns
THE SCREAM QUEEN NEXT DOOR
In just a few short years, Hunter Schafer has gone from small-town North Carolina to global runways, Euphoria stardom, and her first lead role, in the horror flick Cuckoo
Together in Electronic Dreams
Raphaella Lima of video game publisher Electronic Arts brings music to her childhood love of gaming to spotlight many of the most exciting emerging acts of the past two decades in the hit football game EA SPORTS FC
JAMIE XX WAVE AFTER WAVE
Nine years after his decade-defining debut album In Colour, Jamie xx returns with In Waves, a darker and broodier follow-up that saw him fall back in love with making music
"You can feel trapped when people perceive you as one thing"
On their career-best fourth album, Fontaines D.C. have shed their skin of old to deliver something more fantastical. Grian Chatten tells us the story behind their evolution
IN COMPLETE CONFIDENCE
Confidence Man's Janet Planet and Sugar Bones go bigger and wilder than ever before on 3AM (LA LA LA), an album made about partying, while partying, and perfect for partying to
Collective consciousness
Ezra Collective return with Dance, No One's Watching, the roaring follow-up album to last year's boundary-moving Mercury Prize win
DAYDREAM BELIEVER
Welsh techno-pop artist Kelly Lee Owens is the first signing to Dirty Hit's new dance label, dh2. She talks \"transcending my bullshit\" on the euphoric, thumping club tunes of fourth album, Dreamstate
A BUNCH OF (PRI)MATES
From the story of 'Gary', the title track of Stockport band Blossoms' fifth album inspired by a fibreglass gorilla, to breaking new ground with their own record label and staying friends after 10 years, the tightknit band tell Rolling Stone UK all about it
RULE OF LAWTEY
Stepping up to play a comic-book icon in the big-budget sequel Joker: Folie à Deux could prove a life-changing moment for Industry star Harry Lawtey. But he's trying not to think about it...