I been listening at The Chemical Brothers and I have to say they appear to have an attitude problem which will not be cured.I have been listening to "Believe" and I think that they got the sample if off Gravity Kills unless the Brothers got it from somewhere that also Kills got it from. Which would be forked recursion AND NOBODY WANTS THAT.
But you listen to this and you have to ask yourself WHAT is it when performance is private and digital and ultimately incrementally iterative and explicitly allusional? My friend Clare dances once and that dance is irretrievable. She can't get it back and splay her toes just a bit more like that. Which makes her work final in a way. Now you can sit down there if you want in the pit with Derrida and Foucault and all their bags of ink and tell me that The Chemical Brothers are never the same twice and at least tonight, when the sweat is pouring off me, I will call you a liar and I may even get down in the pit with you and show you just what the business end of my Target Clearance Men's Shoes look like. Because the truth is that The Chemical Brothers are no more done than Clare is. But they cut and print. And away they go.
I think the problem (was there a problem? I am the only person referring to a problem) is that they -- the Brothers -- SOUND done. So in other words I am saying that the Brothers appear and sound done because they are doing this in a deeply synthetic way. They are bringing their music in not just a genuinely but also a putatively synthetic way. They are climbing down into the music and shooting it through with plastic threads. Whereas the Counting Crows, who came up next in the Playlist, are expert at sounding organic.
What are we saying here? We are saying that the Chemical Brothers also rock out. And now that we are listening to the Violent Femmes ("Gimme the Car") we are saying that what is good, what is really good, is to have a Playlist titled OW OW OW. Because that is what the Playlist is titled and WE ARE ALL ABOUT OW OW OW.