Track Listing

1. Come With Us
2. It Began In Afrika
3. Galaxy Bounce
4. Star Guitar
5. Hoops
6. My Elastic Eye
7. The State We're In (Featuring Beth Orton)
8. Denmark
9. Pioneer Skies
10. The Test (Featuring Richard Ashcroft)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21257 in Music
• Released on: 2002-01-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
If anyone's suffering from new-year blues, Come With Us will shake them out of their narcolepsy. This fantastic album roars out of the starting blocks like a supercharged dragster, blowing up a heady fume of hip-hop techno flavoured with the Chemical's new found post-rave happiness. Their fourth album shows all the passion of their earlier works coupled with a sophistication beyond the mere wish to knock people's musical heads off. Impressively after over six years of making music and touring they've lost none of their enthusiasm. In fact their longevity seems to inspire them to greater achievement in a field that traditionally feeds off the new, the novel and the young. Best of all, the Brothers have developed the ability to communicate heartfelt emotions, evident on tracks such as the Beth Orton sung "The State We're In", the Pink Floyd-like "Pioneer Skies" and magnificent album closer "The Test". That doesn't mean that there aren't the "traditional" Chemical Brothers' dancefloor killers. The opener and title track "Come With Us" is easily the pulsating equal of "Hey Boy Hey Girl" or 1995's "Block Rockin' Beats". Both already released singles, the bizarre "It Began in Afrika" and the Donna Summer-meets-Kraftwerk blur of "Star Guitar" are included in their original form. They're probably the album's weakest tracks. The Brothers have moved on, yet they're still as good as they were. Go with them. --Jake Barnes

CD Description
Fourth album from dance duo the Chemical Brothers features collaborations with Beth Orton on 'The State We're In' and Richard Ashcroft on closing track 'The Test'. Also includes the singles 'It Started In Afrika' and 'Star Guitar'.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely superb - best Chemicals album to date
Wow - this album really is stunning. I've been a Chemicals fan ever since the original release of 'Song To The Siren', and have largely enjoyed their output, but they've totally surpassed themselves with this album. If you've heard 'It Began In Afrika' - good as it is, it's probably the most conventional Chemicals track on the album - you may have thought that you'd heard it all before, but this album rewards you with so much more.
Leaving the big-beat sound far behind, and starting with the storming, swirling title track, this shows a level of class, production, and - yes - songwriting that is head and shoulders above the dance music competition. Moving on to 'It Began In Afrika' (the title sample is a dance music sample-library classic), you get some classic Chemicals, raging overdriven synths, tweaky 303, with a really great driving live conga player jamming over the top. The track ends up with a beautifully programmed scratch-breakdown section, before slowing the tempo down a little to drop you into the sample-slap-bass-funk of 'Galaxy Bounce', a great little number.

However, it's when we get into track 4, 'Star Guitar' that you know things are cookin' on gas with this album - it's a great wide open, sweeping, psychedelic number with the drifing looped vocal line "You should feel what I feel, you should take what I take".

As that tune drifts out to the cosmos, we come back down to Earth with probably my favourite track of the whole album - Hoops. Innocently starting with some fluffy reversed sitar loops, a great vocal sample, and some lovely acoustic guitar, the gentle 808 drum track in the background gradually picks up more and more momentum, like the small stones starting an avalanche, until a lovely scale played up the guitar brings us to the bassline, then the real meat of the track kicks in with a great 808 electro beat, and behold - a storming track that brings together an acoustic guitar and an 808 drum machine and gets them a hotel room to get down and dirty.

From peak to peak, we move on to "My Elastic Eye", a staccato intro takes us to a great wobbling analog bassline, building up to the star of the tune, a great, wide-open sample that sounds like an angel yodelling in space(!)

After all this action we are relieved by the Beth Orton Collaboration(TM), which is really rather beautiful, a slow, trippy, soulful number yet with all the little production wierdnesses you'd expect from the Chemicals - "The State We're In" is definitely a classic chill tune, until after five lovely minutes it starts accelerating the tempo, more and more movement, faster and faster, until we're properly back in House Music land, from whence we are tossed happily into the four to the floor "Denmark" - a nice little club number, with classily sampled slap bass riffs and hooky hooks.
The following track, "Pioneer Skies", a long, slowly building trippy, spacey wonder is (on your first listen) this album's most direct descendent of "The Private Psychedelic Reel", a really nice melodic fantasy that drifts off beautifully into the sunset, leaving you lying on the warm beach, satisfied.
However, Tom & Ed have one more trick up their sleeves - they kept the best till last - "The Test" (featuring Richard Ashcroft). This is a _killer_ tune, starting with eastern flutes and fading in synths as Ashcroft's distinctive voice welcomes us, beckons us in to his house, until slamming the front door behind us, bolting it, and busting out the track proper, a hands-in-the-air stormer, a delerious, joyful ode to partying.. "You know I almost lost my mind, but now I'm home, and I'm free".

The albums is without doubt an essential purchase, and will - I guarantee - feature in many people's "top 10 of 2002" lists.

Congratulations to Tom & Ed for continuing and furthering their career with such style.

Too soon to tell, but this could be a CLASSIC!
The Chemicals always promised a classic dance album, and with Come With Us I think they might just've done it, folks!
In reality, it's probably too soon to tell, but in future years, I pretty much expect this album to be ranked alongside the likes of Screamdelica and Leftism as THE all time great dance albums.

After the hit and miss affair of Surrender, and Exit Planet Dust not dating at all well - Dig Your Own Hole was probably the album I would have recommended to any would-be Chemicals fans.
So it's my pleasure that Come With Us harks back to Dig Your Own Hole's funkyness and 'deep down and dirty' grooves, but instead of DYOH's weak spots (piku, don't stop the rock), I've yet to find ANY on Come With Us.

One of the greatest things about Come With Us, is that it carries you from beginning to end - it's not just a collection of hit songs that don't necessarily gel together - and every track feels like it adds something to the greatness of this album.

Tracks to particularly look out for: Come With Us, My Elastic Eye, and Star Guitar.

Very Disappointing
Having listened to the full CD several times I couldnt point the finger at why i disliked the CD so much. Then i realised why after listening back to the first two albums this CD simply does not live up to the very high standards set. While I thought Surrender was reasoanble standard, unusally for a a group such as The Chemical Brothers seem to get worse with every album. The first album was so fresh and vital, the second album was much darker but still refreshingly and occasionally mesmorising. Surrender was an unexpected step into the mainstream with a slicker sound that occasioanlly benefitted the music. So where does Come with us go wrong? So difficult to pinpoint - but in tracks such as Hoops the constant changing of noises and wrongly placed samples over a 1990s techno esque ministry of sound background is not good enough in 2002. While It Began In Afrika was I felt one of their weakest singles it still manages to outshine most tracks on the album. The problem is most tracks start promisingly but end up changing or having misguided samples or steel drums in the background. The opening tune is very good escpecially the 'Fight...fight' bit. But it stumbles towards the end. A lack of hooks is very noticeable. Star Guitar is lovely I guess although i dont expect the chemicals to sound like Daft Punk it is quite a nice tune. A second star is awarded for the fantastic closing track The Test which is simply a great tune with Richard Ashcroft singing the best song of his career. My Elastic eye is ok - reminiscent of Surrender tunes, Denmark is just an average dance tune and Pioneer Skies is not up too much. The State Were In is a strange tune but one that has grown on me - a strange hybrid of electronica and folk/country featuring Beth Orton for the third time in a chemical brothers album. (Check out Alive Alone on the first album -its a classic) On this 4th album the chemical brothers have clearly lost their way - the album sounds too polished for my liking and it lacks the wonderful feel of the first album especially. When i see all these good reviews below im not impressed as people clearly seem to have forgotten how good they used to be.