It starts, appropriately enough, with a police siren. It's a cheap sonic pun, certainly, but The Chemical Brothers' debut single was more than a promise of things to come - it was also a warning.
'Song To The Siren' (which features a sample from the Cocteau Twins' recording of the same name) was knocked out in 1993 by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons (known then as The Dust Brothers, until litigation came calling) in Rowlands' bedroom, using just a DAT, a crappy Atari sampler and a bog standard hi-fi. It established the duo's simple, but blindingly effective blueprint - a corralling of the squelchy, hysteric, 303-driven dynamics of acid house into a frameworkhip of hip hop beats - and foretold of plenty more bug-eyed, booty-bouncing treats where that came from.
The Chems - as fans everywhere know them - were smitten by rave during endless nights on psychoactive substances in open fields - but acid house was already long since dead in the water by the time they entered a studio. Their genius was knowing exactly where to take it. The mid-90s phenomenon known as big beat was therefore arguably The Chemical Brothers invention and reached its apotheosis in 1997 with their 'Dig Your Own Hole' LP.
This two-CD compilation marks a decade in the Brothers' beats-bothering business: the first delivers every one of their singles (including current collaboration with The Flaming Lips, 'The Golden Path') in chronological order; the second is a haul of rare and previously unreleased tracks .
There are stonking hits a plenty, of course, and it would be a world-champion churl indeed who'd deny the euphoric power of the colossal 'Block Rockin' Beats', the vertiginous pull of 'Hey Boy Hey Girl', or refuse the trippy, frosted sweetness of 'Star Guitar', which marks the Chems' brief love affair with French filtered house. Essentially, however, 'Singles 93-03' is a collection of memory triggers - and therein lies its necessary flaw.
Like any 'best of' compilation, it encourages fond reminiscing rather than reactive thrills. If a week is a long time in politics, then it's several aeons in dance music and these singles, however potent at the time, have necessarily lost the shock of the new. Rowlands and Simons show no signs of quitting, of course (they're in the studio right now working on a brand new album), but the nature of this beast somehow casts them into history. Shame.
