Product Description

Chemical Brothers Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands waste no time on their nuclear-weapon of a second album proving they are masters of the techno groove. DIG YOUR OWN HOLE opens with a sampled shout-out by old-school gangsta Schoolly D, a syncopated bass line, and a drum loop that gives credence to the song's title, "Block Rockin' Beats". This smorgasbord of sounds--a hallucinatory interweaving of hip-hop, techno, trance and the Chemicals' trademark synthesized guitar loop--buildsup and cold-rocks the first five minutes of the record likea tsunami crashing ashore. Unlike most productions in the electronic/dance-music universe, the music on DIG YOUR OWN HOLE also has the weight of great rock and roll. That makes DIG YOUR OWN HOLE the personification of modern pop music at its chaotic best, and a funky agent of change.
DIG YOUR OWN HOLE is built on a repetition of beats, samples and skewered sounds, but that doesn't mean it's a repetitive album. Between bass-heavy house tunes like "It Doesn't Matter" and "Elektro Bank", the Chemicals show where their pop-oriented interests lie--in tradition. Whether butting heads with the Beatles ("Setting Sun", which features vocals by Oasis' Noel Gallagher), exploring English folk tonalities ("Where Do I Begin", featuring Beth Orton) or venturing on sprawling acid-rock voyages (the instrumental "Private Psychedelic Reel", with Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue), the Chemicals refashion familiar styles with a beat-heavy, electronic gleam. Far from digging a hole, the Chemicals are actually building a bridge, to "where it's at".

Track Listing

1. Block Rockin' Beats
2. Dig Your Own Hole
3. Elektrobank
4. Piku
5. Setting Sun
6. It Doesn't Matter
7. Don't Stop The Rock
8. Get Up On It Like This
9. Lost In The K Hole
10. Where Do I Begin
11. Private Psychedelic Reel

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35157 in Music
• Released on: 1997-04-07
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.com
To follow up their bombastic 1995 album Exit Planet Dust, the Chemical Brothers fine-tuned their bombastic beats and produced a rock-solid pop album (pun intended). Dig Your Own Hole finds the common ground between rock & roll and techno, both in spirit and substance. Singles like "Block Rockin' Beats," "Elektrobank," and "Setting Sun" (featuring vocals by Oasis's Noel Gallagher) may lack the big hair and pomposity of rock music, but they make up for it in spades, with sampled and real guitars battling for space with sirens and distorted hip-hop drums. The album reeks of pure enthusiasm and energy, evoking a crowd-pleasing exuberance that makes Dig Your Own Hole a Back in Black for the late 1990s. Pure stadium techno. --Matthew Corwine

Customer Reviews

Ten years on, still a massive album
Way back when, this was one of the defining big beat albums. Massive percussion, explosions etc underneath layers of almost discordant samples and loops. It broke the Brothers into the mainstream with Block Rockin Beats leading the way on the radio, and Setting Sun ticking the celebrity vocals box.

Ten years on, this remains a cracking album. The tracks merge into one soundtrack, which veers between the plaintive Where Do I Begin to the real hardcore mid section of the album. Sometimes you get a nice neat packaged chorus sing a long, and sometimes you get a real mashup of noise. But the quality shines through. And if you turn it up all the way to 11, then it becomes just awesome, the subtleties, the balance of the different layers, brilliant....

Probably not the best place to start for a Chemical beginner, maybe Push the Button or Surrender are more user friendly. But this one put some commercial shine on the raw promise of Exit Planet Dust. If you like your dance with a big phat beat underneath, then this is one for you.

So near....
Here's my review of 'Dig Your Own Hole':

1. Block Rockin' Beats: 9/10- pure quality breakbeat funk
2. Dig Your Own Hole: 10/10- one of the phattest tunes ever
3. Elektrobank: 7/10- well produced, but a bit too much in the mix I'd say
4. Piku: 7.5/10- funky little number, nothing special
5. Setting Sun: 9/10- big, funky and fresh, a good party tune
6. It Doesn't Matter: 4.5/10- well produced, uninspired techno
7. Don't Stop The Rock: 5.5- flashes of a real good tune are revealed, but the track is too monotonous
8. Get Up On It Like This: 8/10- quite funky & cool
9. Lost In The K Hole: 10/10- my fave- those chimes take me to heaven, and the bassline is gorgeous
10. Where Do I Begin: 9.5/10- blissful, chilled breakbeat
11. The Private Psychedelic Reel: 10/10- epic and phat at the same time, this track is a true dance classic.

Overall: This album contains a few real killers, but too many fillers for it to be a classic. The good tracks are bloody good, though.

Superlative
'Dig Your Own Hole' is a masterpiece, even better than 'Exit Planet Dust'. It shows that The Chemical Brothers back catalogue can rival that of Underworld. The tracks aren't discrete, the music is continuous -- a wild gush of subgenreless dance music. Caveat: This must not be listened to through headphones. I dismissed it as mere noise the first time I played it because the headphones compressed it. It deserves the best speakers possible. You have to allow all the different elements of the song to express themselves clearly.
Best track = Where Do I Begin (wonderful musical climax).
Worst = 3 or 8 are slightly undermodulated and 11 is too long.