release date: Jul. 17, 2015
format: cd (Deluxe Edition - XDUSTCDX 10)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,86]
producer: The Chemical Brothers
label: Virgin EMI - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Sometimes I Feel so Deserted" - 2. "Go" (feat. Q-Tip) - 4. "EML Ritual" (feat. Ali Love) - 5. "I'll See You There" - 7. "Reflexion" - 9. "Born in the Echoes" (feat. Cate Le Bon) - 10. "Radiate" - 11. "Wide Open" (feat. Beck) - *14. "Go (Extended Mix)" - *15. "Reflexion (Extended Mix)"
*Tracks 12-15 are bonus tracks included on the Deluxe Edition
8th studio album by The Chemical Brothers, released 5 years following Further, is a nice return to the big beat foundation of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons. Five years is a long time to wait but luckily the two have released a soundtrack album and a fine live album following Further. After having experimented in a more electronic area with focus on electro house and expanding the duo's musical universe, which I enjoyed to great extent with the 2010 album but I didn't fully get the soundtrack album for Hanna (2011), they here turn to their glorious past. They kind of reach back and basically, as I hear it, combine the danceable greatness from Surrender with the more... electronic Further, and thankfully, also skip the neo-psychedelia, tribal house, and hip hop influences from all the duo's three albums in the new millennium. The two best tracks are "Reflexion" and "Radiate" - quite similar in style, and perhaps even the two compositions that are most in "family" with the sound and style found on the previous studio album, Further, and although, it doesn't reach the quality of the 2010 album, it' still one of the best albums of the year.
[ allmusic.com, NME, Mojo 4 / 5, Rolling Stone, Q Magazine 3 / 5 stars ]
[ Anthony Fantano's needledrop review ]
