The Chemical Brothers

Manchester and the Dust Brothers

Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands met at the University of Manchester in 1989. In 1992 they began DJing at a Manchester club night under the name the Dust Brothers, borrowed from the American production duo. When they ran out of instrumental hip hop records to play they started making their own. Their first track, Song to the Siren, was put together with a Hitachi hi-fi system, an Atari ST, a sampler and a keyboard. Record shops turned down the 500 white labels they pressed as too slow, but Andrew Weatherall played it in his sets, and Junior Boy's Own released it in 1993.

A residency at the Heavenly Sunday Social Club in London followed in October 1994, where Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller and Tim Burgess were regular visitors. The original Dust Brothers objected to the name, so in 1995 the duo took a new one from their own track Chemical Beats. The change gave their first album its title. Exit Planet Dust came out in June 1995, entered the UK chart at number 9 and went on to sell over a million copies worldwide. Its first single was Leave Home.

Big beat at number one

In August 1996 they supported Oasis at Knebworth in front of 125,000 people on each of two nights. Gallagher had told them at Glastonbury in 1995 that he would like to sing on a future track, and the result, Setting Sun, was released that September and went straight to number one. Their second album, Dig Your Own Hole, appeared on 7 April 1997. It was their first album to top the UK chart, and its opening track, Block Rockin' Beats, gave them a second number one single and a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called the album a wild beauty of a record that burned the argument between rock and techno to ash.

Surrender followed in June 1999, with guests including Noel Gallagher, Hope Sandoval, Bernard Sumner and Jonathan Donahue. It also reached number one, and its first single, Hey Boy Hey Girl, went to number 3. The duo played Woodstock '99 and the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury in June 2000. Come with Us (2002) went straight in at number one, and Push the Button (2005), with Galvanize featuring Q-Tip, won the Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album in January 2006.

Films, scores and returns

We Are the Night followed in 2007 and Further in 2010, and Further came with a film for each of its eight tracks, made with Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall. They scored Joe Wright's film Hanna in 2011 and released the concert film Don't Think in 2012, documenting their 2011 Fuji Rock Festival set in Japan. Born in the Echoes (2015) entered the UK chart at number one, their sixth chart topper and the most for any dance act in Britain. Simons stepped back from touring in 2015 for academic work, with Smith filling in on stage, and came back to live shows at Parklife in Manchester in 2016. No Geography (2019) won three Grammys in 2020, including Best Dance/Electronic Album.

The tenth album

For That Beautiful Feeling, their tenth, was released on 8 September 2023, made largely during the first Covid-19 lockdown. Rowlands said they wanted to speak very directly through music. The singer Halo Maud opens and closes the record, and Beck sings on Skipping Like a Stone. It scored 81 on Metacritic and was nominated for the Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album. A book of new interviews with the band and their collaborators, Paused in Cosmic Reflection, was published in October 2023, and in 2025 Rowlands and the singer Aurora formed a project called Tomora.