Exit Planet Dust

Released

After 1992 club hit “Song to the Siren” made them popular enough to alert the Beastie Boys-producing Dust Brothers to the fact that there were two weirdos out of Manchester using their name, the newly-rechristened Chemical Brothers announced themselves to a broader market with one of dance music’s greatest debut albums. Of course, this was one of those scenarios where they got to a great album through great singles: along with the keening spaceship-battle intensity of that aforementioned breakthrough ‘92 single, Exit Planet Dust gets more killer than filler out of ‘94 EP selections “Chemical Beats” (a big shameless funky fusion of acid house and hip-hop breaks halfway between Phuture and The Bomb Squad) and “One Too Many Mornings” (a gorgeous dub comedown). As for the newer material, the pop-minded collabs bolster things beyond just dancefloor bangers, whether it’s the lost-in-the-haze psych-folk post-breakup isolation of closing Beth Orton feature “Alive Alone,” or the euphoric overdrive of breakbeat monster “Life Is Sweet,” featuring an enigmatic and nearly incomprehensible whirring-drone dispatch from the dazed voice of Charlatans singer Tim Burgess. But it’s opener and lead single “Leave Home” — an onrush of evolutionary rapport between proto-synthpop, peak Detroit techno, Madchester rave-rock, and boom-bap hip-hop beats — that feels like the kind of mission statement that can carry not just a band but a whole movement well into the next decade. It was inevitable that eventually some new wave of artists would figure out what happens when you realize that there’s a new canon to be built around a reconciliation between all of Kraftwerk’s potential heirs. Exit Planet Dust just made that inevitability a blast to listen to.

Nate Patrin

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