On this episode Niall and Andrea we dig into one of the most influential dance albums of the ’90s – Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole.
Released in 1997, Dig Your Own Hole was the second album from Tow Rowlands and Ed Simons, an album that brought a UK number 1 with ‘Setting Sun‘ featuring Noel Gallagher on vocals, acclaim in the US that allowed them to build upon the success of 1995’s debut Exit Planet Dust and become household touring names.
The album, featuring the singles ‘Setting Sun’, ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, ‘Elektrobank’ and ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ were released the same year as Radiohead’s OK Computer, The Prodigy’s Fat Of The Land, The Verve’s Urban Hymns and Daft Punk’s Homework.
Electronic music was having a moment, Britpop was waning, music was becoming less reliant on real people playing drums, samples came from hip-hop and was changing pop music, there was a whole strand of electronic music, that had spilled out of the 88 acid house era in the UK and was making a mark.
Dig Your Own Hole took the pair supernova in the music world, catapulting them from the big beat scene they were associated with to a zeitgeist-capturing dance music informed by psychedelia, funk, hip-hop, soul, rock and acid house.
“They take a whole new song structure, the song structure of a house record, and make a psychedelic rock record.” – Jason Bentley KCRW DJ
“Britpop-with-breakbeats” is how Simon Reynolds describes them in his excellent book Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture
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