Chemical Brothers, The - Come With Us

Come With Us isn't as hard or as raw as previous albums. It does, however, showcase the diverse sounds that The Chemical Brothers can produce.

Come With Us (the song) is both hard-hitting with it's mind-blowing effects and rock percussion and funky with it's guitar later on. Combined with it's ridiculously serious vocals, it is quite the ear-raper. Great stuff! It Began In Afrika (here in a slightly shorter version than the 12") is a mind-blowing trip into tribal sounds, freaky jungle noises and acid drenched instruments. An absolutely amazing track with an amazing and equally mind-blowing B-Side (Hot Acid Rhythm 1). Galaxy Bounce (another edited track but can be found full length on the Tomb Raider movie sound track) sounds like it belongs in a strip club. It is fucking raw and dirty sounding; no nonsense.

Star Guitar is unlike anything the Chems have ever produced. Extremely dreamy and uplifting from start to finish and done so high quality that it'll leave anyone grinning. Hoops (the basis for Electronic Battle Weapon 6) is ambient at start but builds to a hard beat and instrumental chaos. It is done so well and is rounded off amazingly with a dying down ambient finish. My Elastic Eye is again a track that the Chems have never attempted; a stagnant low-freq bassline with an old school psychedelia opening. The panicked drums switching to deeply released energetic highs then back again make this track one big musical roller coaster.

The State We're In uses Beth Orton's beautiful voice as heard in Alive Alone and Where Do I Begin. This is an epic track and probably my favourite on the album. Starts slow and gradually progresses to a beautiful instrumental display. Before you know it, you are hit with Denmark. This track is funky and easily danceable with its horns and almost talking bass guitar. The middle of the track strikes you with a brief tripped out vocal echoing from speaker to speaker "It will never be the same... never"; completely out of place yet entirely appropriate and also the track picks up nicely from that and ends with echoing whispers that approach creepy sounding until you are hit with Pioneer Skies. Pioneer Skies is an incredible tune. It sounds like The Beatles for a new generation. With each piano chord comes what feels like a huge buildup, but is not only a second. With a chaotic buildup in the middle of this track then thinning out and getting straight to the point with one deep piano chord which takes forever to fade; it leaves one mesmerised.

The Test I personally find too rock-like and monotonous. Although it is a great track, I do not care for the vocals and the beat gives me a headache. I feel that if there were a deeper beat and less prominent vocals, it would be a perfect track for this album, but to me it sounds like an indy rock band with a DJ in the background. I would love this album much more if they didn't slap that song on the end; it's not even mixed in!

Overall, I would say great album. Definitely not what you would expect from The Chemical Brothers but it points their talent in so many directions and succeeds in proving all of them worthy.

'Come With Us' isn't as unpredictible as Chemicals used to offer, because this image of letting loose in favour of repetitive drums and samples simply makes it not.