Artists Profile  

Current Location :: London, UK 

Real Name :: Ed Simons & Tom Rowlands

Music Genres :: Breaks, Electronica

Alias/Collaboration: :: Tom & Ed Chemical 

Since they first met a decade ago, the Chemical Brothers have been on a mission. Their aims: to find the sounds no one had heard before, to push their music as far as it will go, to make each record fresher and more exciting than the last. And from "Song To The Siren" in 1992 to the brain-blitzing mutant psychedelia of their third album, Surrender, that's what they've done. On the way they've invented (and transcended) big beat, toured the globe, remixed the world and his brother, soundtracked some of the messier nights out of the last few years and made some of the most influential music of the decade.

Ed Simons (tall, curly hair) and Tom Rowlands (taller, long hair) met while studying history at Manchester Poly in 1989. They'd come from the south to Manchester for the music and launched themselves at the club scene with a vengeance. From nights at the legendary Hacienda, to raves in Blackburn and misbehaviour at clubs like Justin Robertson's Spice and Most Excellent they soaked it all up. When they started to DJ ("borrowing' the name the Dust Brothers from the American producers of the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique), they put their own spin on things. During their first residency at Naked Under Leather (as debauched as its name suggests) they established a party-starting reputation for going where most other DJs feared to tread: joining the dots between acid house, hip hop and rock.

Tom was already part of struggling Henley-on-Thames Balearic band Ariel, but when he went into the studio with Ed in 1992 everything clicked into place. The result was "Song To The Siren", a record that mixed breakbeats, sirens, shuddering bass and ethereal indie vocals. They sent one of the 500 copies to Andrew Weatherall, who played it every time he DJed and signed the duo to his Junior Boys Own label.

1994 was the year that the Chemical Brothers changed dance music. For starters, there were the groundbreaking "14th Century Sky" (featuring Chemical Beats) and "My Mercury Mouth" EPs and a track donated to the charity album Serious Road Trip. Rapidly becoming the most in demand remixers in the country, they also reworked everyone worth reworking, from the Manic Street Preachers to Saint Etienne. In one fortnight alone they tackled Prodigy, Primal Scream and the Charlatans and came out on top every time. They also made their live debut at Weatherall's Sabresonic club. Finally, for 13 weeks that summer and autumn, they helmed the decks at London's notorious hedonism hotspot the Heavenly Social and introduced everyone who could get in (including Paul Weller, Tricky and Primal Scream) to the delights of dancing to Barry White, Oasis, Chicago acid and Eric B & Rakim all in one night.

The duo also played acetates of tracks from their own forthcoming debut album, Exit Planet Dust. Signing to Virgin, the Chemical Brothers (now renamed after a dust-up with the original Dust Brothers) finally released it in June 1995. It sold 275,000 copies in Britain alone and over a million copies worldwide, while the singles "Leave Home" and "Life Is Sweet" both went Top 20 in the UK. With guest vocalists Tim Burgess and Beth Orton, the album captured everything that was exciting about the Social: messy, ferocious and often emotional.

Other producers soon copied the Chemical formula and the duo inadvertently spawned the entire big beat movement, with artists like Fatboy Slim still citing them as the original inspiration. Two years later, even U2 were making Chemical-style tracks.