Along with a couple of actual brothers from Burnage, the Chemical Brothers were one of the great success stories of the 1990s. With a good working knowledge of samplers, and virtually nothing in the way of conventional musical ability, Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands found themselves a key part of British dance music. Ten years later they are still selling out big venues all over the world, releasing the same album every so often, and generally not putting a foot wrong.
In Manchester the Brothers started the evening by making a noise that sounded like gunfire. Within moments the auditorium was shaking to the strains of Music: Response, the terrifying lead-off track to the 1999 album Surrender, which features the sound of a digital watch being fed through a wall of Marshall amplifiers. For the next two hours the audience was assaulted by surround-sound sonic terrorism, with basslines deep enough to crush the spine, and filter sweeps shrill enough to shred the nervous system.
It quickly became evident that this was another of those slightly awkward dance/rock events, part gig, part rave, yet lacking vital elements of each. Studious anti-performers, Simons and Rowlands kept a low profile, occasionally glancing up from behind their keyboards to wave a fist. The audience blithely went on facing front, hopeful for any sign of rock'n'roll showmanship. Musically, there was precious little shaking and stirring of familiar elements, and most of the time it felt as if we were simply being treated to album cuts played at deafening volume. Tunes from the new Come With Us CD were interspersed with familiar old favourites, the most awesome of which is still The Private Psychedelic Reel.
Visceral impact is absolutely at the top of the Chemical Brothers' agenda, but there is nothing to think about, nothing to feel. The cerebral and emotional potential of electronic music go completely ignored. Unconcerned with such namby-pamby nonsense, Rowlands and Simons's intention seems simply to make their fans believe that something horribly frightening is happening to them. And that really isn't too far from the truth.
· At Brixton Academy, London SW9 (020-7771 2000), tonight.
