The conceit of this ninth Chemical Brothers album is a tantalising one: dusting down the kit used on their first two acclaimed albums, Exit Planet Dust (1995) and Dig Your Own Hole (1997). Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have not just endured but prospered since their heyday by redeploying a familiar bag of signifiers – muscular beats, upfront vocals – to reliable effect.
The sequel to 2015’s late-life flowering, Born in the Echoes, does supply a steady stream of knee-jerk fare. Free Yourself is one effective, but super-obvious, paean to dancing, whose video finds AI robots throwing a warehouse rave. But some of No Geography rewinds the 90s more exactingly.
Particularly swirly-eyed are We’ve Got to Try and MAH, tracks that unite a crate-digger vocal sample (the latter from the 1976 film Network) and heady “acieeed” squelch. Bango, meanwhile, basically reinvents Basement Jaxx. There are no superstar guests this time: Japanese rapper Nene provides a verse, and the Norwegian singer Aurora supplies the cooed vocals. In choosing lower-key collaborators, however, Rowlands and Simons seem to want these more-banging-than-average tunes to speak for themselves.
