One Song - The Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be"

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Is “Let Forever Be” the most British song of the '90s? Diallo and LUXXURY take a closer look at this era-defining track from the Chemical Brothers, where big beat production meets Britpop swagger and Beatles-esque psychedelia. They reflect on their favorite moments from the duo’s catalog, wade in Noel Gallagher’s introspective lyrics, and explore how the song captures a culture in flux. One Song Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40SIOpVROmrxTjOtH7Q1yw?si=c9ecb2ac854d4a58 Songs Discussed: “Let Forever Be” - The Chemical Brothers featuring Noel Gallagher “Leave Home” - The Chemical Brothers “Block Rockin’ Beats” - The Chemical Brothers “Gucci Again” - Schoolly D “P.S.K.-What Does It Mean?” - Schoolly D “Change The Beat” - Beside “Loaded” - Primal Scream “Acid Tracks” - Phuture “Setting Sun” - The Chemical Brothers featuring Noel Gallagher “Tomorrow Never Knows” - The Beatles “Got Glint?” - The Chemical Brothers “Hey Boy Hey Girl” - The Chemical Brothers “Music:Response” - The Chemical Brothers “Asleep From Day” - The Chemical Brothers “Out Of Control” - The Chemical Brothers “Blue Monday” - New Order “Electric Mainline” - Spiritualized “Star Guitar” - The Chemical Brothers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And how does it feel like to shine up? So how does it feel to leave the hacienda wasted out of your mind? The sun's coming up, but you're still tripping. You've been listening to loud music and partying with your friends all night. How does it feel? Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it doesn't feel good. Luxury, I'm so excited today.

Because we are diving into one of our mutual favorites, a genre-blending British duo that truly defined electronic music for the mid-90s. well into the 2000. We're diving head first into one of my favorite bands of all time. A huge influence on me as a musician. A band that's been like the soundtrack to my life for decades now,

which is incredible to think about. It's been decades. And today's song brings together Big Beat, 90s Brit pop, and The Beatles. Does it get any more British than that? This song is one of the greatest distillations of late 90s British top culture.

All in one song. Listen, forget Oasis. Forget about them. Forget Blur. Throw them out the window. For the first time, I've never said that since before. Forget Blur.

This may be the greatest British pop song of the 90s. We're talking one song, and that song is Let Forever Be by the Kimball brothers featuring Noel Gallagher. Dear Canadian exporters, our ambitions, our ideas, and our potential were never meant to be boxed in. Nothing can contain us. With the support of Export Development Canada's Market Insights and Financial Solutions, you can turn obstacles into opportunities, discover new markets and keep our nation front and center on the global stage.

The world needs more Canada. Together, let's give it to them. Visit edac.ca to learn more. Don't miss the devil wears product too in theaters. Merrill Street, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci are back. In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility.

I did not hire you, and all I need to do is bide my time until you fail. On May 1st, icons. I'm going to make something of this job. Be the bridges I burn, light my way. Forever. I just love my job. Get tickets now.

The Devil Wears Prada 2. In theaters May 1st, directed by David Frankel. I'm going to be screaming a symphony today, but I don't know that we'll all I understand what it means to scream a symphony. We're going to try to pack these lyrics. I feel like I'm going crazy on the pitch at a man-you game. They're like, get that soccer hooligan out of here. Hi, I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo-Riddle.

And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury. a.k.a. the guy who whispers. And this is one song. That's right, the show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more, listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And if you want to watch one song, you can watch this full episode on YouTube and Spotify. And while you're there, please like and subscribe.

Luxury, before we dive into today's song, listen, I think we've got to set the scene. It's 1999. And British culture is reaching crazy heights. It's pre-millennial tension. stream. Yes, yes. This is right before we got inundated with everything from, you know, Y2K, smart foes, foes far smarter than ourselves. This is the era of the Spice Girls and Posh Spice dating David Beckham, Biddleykeb. This is Austin Powers. This is the Beatles anthology release that came out with Free as a Bird, one of our favorite Beatles songs here at the show. British culture, it seemed

like it was inescapable. It was like a new British invasion happening in the 90s. It was. And setting the scene, it really does feel important to say that this is pre-2000. It's also pre-9-11. This is an era of innocence. This is a fun freaking era. I feel bad for those of you who don't remember the 90s because there was a level of no stress that has never been accomplished since. It just felt like there was no stress and the British were really making incredible music. I want to talk about the Chemical Brothers. I was so excited. I actually ran it to a fan of the show last night at Anderson Pox Bar. a person who works in the music industry who's like, guys, you guys do such a good job.

What's the next episode about? I told him the Chemical Brothers. And he was like, I'm so excited. I've been waiting for an electronic episode. I think, I think this group was an introduction for a lot of us to this genre. What was the first time you remember hearing the Chemical Brothers? I'll never forget because my buddy, Claudiana and Fuso,

we had just graduated college. It was the mid-90s. It was 95, and the record had just came out. And she played me Exit Planet Dust. Wow. She played the whole album. And well, from the first moment of the first song, I was hooked because this was doing everything I wanted. By the way, it should be noted that this was my like rave crew.

So we are coming out of a dance music fandom. Like this is the group that I went to tracks in D.C. I've talked about that on a few episodes on the Delight episode. So we're big dance music fans, but I'm also in rock bands and I'm playing kind of funk music. In my in my rock band, we're kind of doing a funk rock hybrid. It's the chili peppers era. Like all this is going on. And when I hear the Chemical Brothers, when I hear the chemical brothers, when I hear

this song, it all connects. There's something about this song that connected with, it's all the things I liked, especially in that moment as a burgeoning, like music making, I was a drummer. Like I hadn't learned the other skills that I had to choir over time, but I was like, this is everything I want to be in this band. And it was dance music. It had breakbeats.

So there's something funky. It's not just forward to the floor house music, but that's there too somewhere. There's something dusty about the, they're sampling. I could tell that there's like old records in there. But that baseline is a rock and roll baseline. That's not funky. That is something that you would hear.

It's not quite Judas Priest because it's 16th notes. But there's something rock about it. And I just remember hearing Claudio play this for me and thinking, oh my God, they mixed rock and dance. And it's great. What about you, D'all? When was the first time you heard the Chemical Brothers? Okay.

I don't know this is necessarily the first time I heard the Chemical Brothers, but the first time they hit me was, I went to Tower Records. This story is already very, very 90s. I went to Tower Records to check out some new CDs. And I found a CD compilation that was called like, now hits. It wasn't now that's what I call music. It was like a weird-dime store version of it.

It was like a weird bootleg version. Yeah. So this CD, I put it in my car, and I'm like, wow, this song is really cool. And I was like, and I knew my writing part at a time. Bashar, so I tell him, get in the car. I was like, I want to play this new song. And I play up this song called Block Rocket Beats. And he was like, I was like, it's by the Chemical Brothers.

He's like, oh, I know this song. And I play the song. And he says, dude, who are these? Because that ain't the Chemical Brothers. Apparently I bought a bootleg version. Was it block rock and beats? It was like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Back one of one of those block rocket beats.

Like, it was like a guy saying it instead of like the actual sample. Oh my God. Now I need to hear this bootleg. I can't find it. It's one of those cities lost the time. But it's just, it's another example. created block rock and beats somebody actually because when i went through the whole album suddenly i realized that's not corny loves singing that whole song they're all replays they're all are they replays it's just like

i feel like you still find these on it's yeah yeah like people people would sold me a CD of like not the artist singing like all the artists songs of nineteen and it was that tower records not outside the tower records on the pavement oh yeah i'm at mat being sold for rebuck they were those rock rock rock and beats like but she was like who the fuck was that that ain't the chemical brothers Yeah, let's hear a little bit of one of the very early hits. This song actually, what a Grammy. This is Block Rockin' Beats. So apparently my version of Block Rock and Beats was not the official.

I did go back and buy Bigger Own Hole. And in fact, that's not even the Chemical Brothers who say that line. That is a sample. Yeah, I think it's this one. There's a few vocal ones. So let's see. Let's find it. Schoolie Diz back with another one of those block rocking beats.

Buses. Buss it. Scooley D? Gucci again, School E. 1989. That's a hard beat too. But yeah, that's School E D.

School E. is so underrated, y'all. If y'all don't know School E. At least go back and listen to one of my favorite School E tracks. You've probably heard this breakbeat before. This is PSK. What does that be? Oh, yeah.

P.S.K. We're making it. What the hell is that mean? People to people who can't understand. A one home boy became a man. I mean, that's just. Listen, we're down the round. I don't know how it's not come up in our first 100 episodes, but that's one of the biggest samples of all time in that song.

We got to talk about it. I can't believe that we've gone this many episodes without mentioning Change the Beat by B-side. One of the top three samples. You've heard this fresh a million times. Here it is. That comes from, I'll show, that's the end of the song, and here's what came before. Chaljube beat. Chalje le beat.

Bo coter. Changered beat. It's incredible how this song from 1982, which I think Fab Five Freddy has something to do with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fab Five Freddy was all over the downtown scene. Yeah, yeah. Fab Five Freddy is on this track. It's B-side.

It's kind of a one-off. And like at the end of the song, that one isolated fresh means it's easy for DJs to like, you know, actually mix it in. Yeah. And it's used in literally thousands of songs. Thousands of songs. It's an iconic marker of hip-hopness of lineage. And you kind of had to be the cool kid that Fab-5 Freddie. was in the early 80s to know, hey, I'm going to make this song.

Yeah. And you kind of have to be the Kimball Brothers to be cool enough to know, hey, we're going to sample that song. That's what I love about the Chemical Brothers and a lot of the electronica that's coming out in the mid-90s. This is actually the first time of my life where I am kind of fed up with hip-hop. I mean, like, admitted I think I said out on some other episodes because Puffy became so dominant in the aftermath of the deaths of Tupac and Biggie.

Hip-hop was sampling in a very lazy. way, in my opinion. In my opinion, we moved away from Premier at Pete Rock, and now he was just sampling, Hollywood swinging for, you know. Just wholesale. Whole sales. And this is when I got into Electronica, because I was like,

oh, these guys are still doing like cool samples, and it sounds like art. It sounds like collage. And that's why I thought it was really incredible. And the Chemical Brothers are sampling, and they're really adjusting the music for the dance floors that they are DJ. Just for those who don't know,

the Chemical Brothers are Tom Rollins. and Ed Simons. They're a production duo. They met at the University of Manchester. So they're right there, you know, the same area that gave us, you know, the Haseenda Club. And so much of the stuff that we love from the 80s in that dance culture, they're just building an extra layer on top of that. The Haseenda is key to this entire story. Brief reminder from our New Order episode, which was two years ago now suddenly. Go back and listen to it. It's still great. But New Order created a club called the Hacienda. They lost a lot of money from it.

Watch the movie 24-hour party people. You'll get all of this. In very stark contrast to what's happening in America in the 80s, it's rock and dance merging. Right. And cross-pollinating between the two bands are bringing in dance elements to their music, like primal screen, like you mentioned. Famously, this remix of Loaded by Andrew Weatherall, who's part of our story. So that is a rock band going to the hacienda, going to dance clubs, being influenced by the sounds and the beats and the rhythms and the tempos and the sampling. And then you have another thread, which is the Chemical Brothers, which is bedroom producer. who are coming from a DJing perspective

and bringing some of the same elements in. But they're all going to rock clubs and they're all going to dance clubs. And the drugs are changing. We have a mutual friend, Henry Self, who once told me famously when I first met him, he was like, you know, if ecstasy, not even Molly, but if ecstasy was the sound

of that early rave scene by the mid-90s, things had got a little darker, you know, musically. And also people had gotten tired of four on the floor. Even as a hip-hop DJ, my problem with House was often that I was like, don't you get tired of that same four on the floor of beat? I love it now. But I think one of the reasons I gravitated to electronica and electronic music at this time is that

in this subgenre, which became known as Big Beat, is a little darker. So it kind of went better with my hip-hop. And it also had intricate drum beats, which just as a listener, I was just like, these are really fascinating beats. Big Beat is created by artists like Fat Boy Slim, the Crystal Method, the Prodigy. And I've always considered the Chemical Brothers and all these groups, Electronica, more than even Big Beat, because at the end of the day, even if they were using the drums differently, it was all coming together for the purpose of electronic dance and electronic psychedelic music. Yeah. So you mentioned Big Beat, and that's kind of like every genre ever that ever exists is maligned by the people that are categorized in it. This is no exception. Yeah.

I would say personally that when I hear the Chemical Brothers, it's all these influence we're talking about. It's going to rock clubs and going to, it's the hacienda. It's New Order's influence of merging band stuff with like a synthesizer, house beats, et cetera, Blue Monday. But there's also a very specific genre that is like very chemical brothers. This is an acid house, British acid house band that also uses sampling and break beats. If anything, their specific big beat formula might be exactly that. What happens if Acid House meets break beats? Yeah, it's almost like they took the 303 and they put a very specific sort of like

drum sound. Exactly. Let's play what that sounds like and then we'll explain it. This is future acid tracks from 1987, one of the seminal Chicago Asset House tracks using this instrument, this sound that you're about to hear the squelchy thing is actually meant to be a bass sound, but didn't really sound like a bass. So these early producers are like, hey, it does this. This is awesome. Let's do it. Sounds like acid. All that squelchy, squeaky stuff is this is meant is a bass. It's like a Roland TB303, which is intended to bass lines, but they found that it made all these weird sounds. They're like, you know, it got the assignment all wrong, but we like where it ended up.

Exactly, which is the beautiful thing that happens with these machines. They find unintended usage, which is better than the intended one. Tom Rollins from Chemical Brothers says all our records are influenced by our first connection with Acid House and everything within that. That's sort of intoxicating feeling that we had when we first found dance music. So this is really foundational to Chemical Brothers and to this song. That's super helpful, Blake. And I think what you bring up is actually important to point out,

this is a time when, like, if you live in America, there are certain labels that are, I think, just nailing it. Ninja Tune is one of them. AstroWorks has Fat Boy Slim, DaBunk, the Kibbuckle Brothers. Like, certain labels just have everybody. And I think what sets the Kibokal Brothers apart is there embrace a psychedelia. And like this subversive collaboration with, you know, they're always kind of flirting with the Beatles on their second hour.

album, Dig Your Own Hole, which is where I sort of came into my fandom of the group. They have this collaboration with Oasis frontman, Noel Gallagher, where he sings like Liam Gallagher for years, decades almost. I thought it was him, too. I thought it was Liam Gallagher. But you've got Noel Gallagher. He's arguably one of the biggest rock stars of the era, definitely one of the biggest in British music. And they do a song called Setting Sun.

I have some questions about this one. Let's listen to it first. This is their number one hit in the UK, Setting Sun. I'm getting too hype. This is a good band. This is a good song. It's all good. Listen, this is the rawness.

This is like the aggression that I feel is missing. It's the rock and roll. It's the rock and roll and dance music. I feel like it's the aggression that I have been missing in the current hip hop era. Like, I really want, it's why I like JPEG Mafia and some of the Dizzo Curry stuff. But like I just, I need to like rage out a little bit. Sending Sun is such a good song. I got to say, it does sound a lot like a Beatles song that I know.

This is the first time anybody he's ever drawn. a line between oasis of the Beatles, I'm sure. I'm sure nobody else has ever heard the beetle influences with that bad. There's a connection between those bands. Interesting. Can you play a little bit of Tomorrow Never Knows? Listen, I've done one step better. Oh, you can't do it.

Go for it. I'll do you one step better. I did a little bit of a side by side so we can hear the connections. The songs are connected. Is it an interpulation? Let's listen and find out. Okay. So Tomorrow Never Knows sounds like this.

I mean, that's the note, right? It's so good. I love that song. Hey, fight me. That's the best song of Revolver. Let's talk about this just for a second. It is the best song on Revolver. It is the best song on Revolver.

And Revolver is the best album. Therefore, it's the best Beatles song. Therefore, it's the best Beatles song. The connections, Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles, starts with this C drone. Yes. It's just a single note.

There's no tonality. It's just a C. We don't know if it's major or minor. And it's a sitar. It's a sitar. The chemical. Brothers song starts with a C. Yeah.

You play them together. It sounds like this. They're both in C. That's not illegal. That's not illegal. It's not infringement. The Beatles don't own the letter C, you guys. They don't own the letter C.

They don't know the letter C. That's right. We should title this episode that. And then when the beat comes in, when Ringo comes in with the beat, it sounds a little like this. One is a lot. Oh, above. One, two, three, a four.

And a four. And the Camacalco Brothers. beat. Sounds a little like this. And when you put it together, that's obviously a little chaotic there, but the beats align. The snares are in the same place. Is the Chemical Brothers drums? Are those original drums, or is that a sample?

We're going to get to that in a second. Two more quick things. We've got these birds, not birds. It's one, by the way, the Tomorrow Never Know's connection has many layers. A second layer, I'll tell you now, is the Beatles pioneered the use of loops in a pop song. Totally.

by they had gone home, they all had little tape recorders, and they taped sounds that they found around. These aren't coming from other records. Yeah. These are loops of sounds in the world. And this is one of them. I always think of these sound like birds to me, but it's this sound. I know.

Like seagulls or something. They went to the Lillipudian shore and got some seagulls, making some sounds. Right. And there's a number of different loops within the song, but they are sampling pioneers too with this song, clearly an influence. We're cracking codes today, folks. And in the Chemical Brothers Setting Sun, we have a similar sound. It's this.

They don't sound the same. It's not the same notes, but sort of the idea of this high-pitched weird thing is happening in both songs. That's so good. And last but not least, we have the song itself when the vocals kick in. We learn that it is in C major. But there's no harmonic information in the song. There's no chord changes. The bass is just playing one note.

Same thing's happening in setting sun. except it's C minor. That's the only difference is the notes being hit and the melody turn out to be minor. You said your body was young, but your mind is very old. This is a classic case

of being inspired by a song writing sideways from it, but making a completely new composition. Like, not even sideways. It's like 10 degrees. It's right on top of it. It's not 45. It's a very cute angle.

It's a very cute angle. It's a very cute angle. It's right on top of it, but there's nothing. illegal about it. And we weren't able to corroborate this necessarily, but there were some threads on the internet that perhaps the Beatles sued or tried to sue, but then

it was demonstrated by a musicologist that they were, in fact, not using recordings. That's important. It wasn't a sample. It was a replay. They programmed the drums to sound like Ringo's drum beat. But nobody can own a drum beat. You can't own the rhythm itself. So the second, you move away from using a sample and redoing the same sound,

finding the same sound and the same drumbeat, it's completely illegal. So this is a legal writing sideways new composition. I'm all in favor. It's a great tool for songwriters out there. Take a song you love, break it down like that, and redo certain ideas from it into something new.

Well, listen, today we're talking about a song from the third album, Surrender, which is my personal favorite Chemical Brothers album, Hands Down. Tom Rowland describes this album as their attempt to craft the perfect album. He says, we were trying to squeeze everything they liked about music and everything they wanted to say with their music into one cohesive album.

I think they succeeded. It is beginning to end such a beautiful, perfect album. And what a great journey, too. We'll be talking about that later. One of the things that I love about this album, in fact, any time I've ever thought I wanted to put out my own album, but I was like, I'm absolutely going to steal that structure, that format, is that the songs blend from one into the next.

Like, it's almost like a DJ set. The songs don't fade out and then it's kind of like, no, this is a cohesive. This is one cohesive thought. And it's a beautiful thought. When one of my absolute favorite songs of all time got glint, which sounds like an early Chicago house song, bleeds into, I think, their first single off this album, which is, hey boy, hey girl.

Sounds like watching the machine. It's insane. They're bringing it in. Intrigue. Hey girls. Be boys. Here we go. And I'm glad that you mentioned that it's a seamless blend,

like a DJ set, the one song blends into the next. that's literally how they are on stage. So their DJ background really comes into play how they make records, how they make songs, but also how they flow from stage to your headphones and back again. It's the same band all the way across. The way they play live is they take the sounds they've recorded, the songs and the sounds.

They blend them an interesting new live remixy ways on stage. One of the best shows I've ever seen, Coachella 2005. Chemical Brothers? Yes. Okay. So I have to jump in here. Yeah. I went to the first Coachella,

1999. I paid my $50, if you could believe that, and I drove out to the desert by myself, I found comfortable parking and walked in. I mean, like, that's how much a non-big deal of the first Coachella is. And I didn't like that anymore. And they were great.

But I will say, a moment that changed me as a person was when I walked past the stage and head back. And I went to go see the Chemical Brothers because I did like them. I did love this album. You like fake blocker? rocking beats or at this point? No, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. This is when they were

supporting surrender. And I'll never forget this moment. It's clear as a day to me. I'm standing in front of the stage and they play music response. Right before the music changes in music response, the projection behind them was of these robots. It was a robot cartoon and it was in black and white. And right when the music changed, just like Dorothy entering Oz, they went color. And in that moment, I said, I screamed out loud, I'm completely sober. I screamed out loud, color robots! And I lost it. And I knew at that moment that, at least for the next couple of years, hip hop had been replaced as my favorite genre of music. By the Chemical Brothers. When music response hits that one moment. Not even a genre, but this band was the one. Not even this band,

but I just knew at that moment, I was like, any music that could do this and provide a very, visual that I thought was just brilliant in that moment, it did something to me. It's right here at this moment. You'll hear the transition. It's a music response off the album, Surrender. Music and dream or some kind of response. Color robots. It sounds quaint now, but I'm telling you, when you're in your early 20s, that happens,

and you're just open to the moment, it does change the way you listen to music. This is DJ-centric music composition. This is not how you think if you're a Beatles fan and you, you, And you just deign dance music. No, this is important. This cross-pollination, they're learning from both sides. You can learn about harmony and melody. If you're only listening to acid tracks,

you won't be getting a lot of harmony and chord changes. But if you're only listening to The Beatles, you're not getting some of the stuff that dance music has, like tension building and sound selection. From song to song. They're not thinking like, oh, let's go into our next single. No, this is a continuous thought. And I want to point out one other thing,

because this is actually lost also in today's EDM environment. You got to remember, there weren't a bunch of laptops on stage. There wasn't a pre-programmed set, so to speak. These guys are on stage with, like, what I used to term, banks of keyboards and equipment. They're on stage. There are chords everywhere. Fung Shui people would lose what a Chemical Brothers concert looked like back there. They bought, own, and transported around with them every piece of gear available.

And they're literally running around the stage, like, pulling a chord, adjusting a thing. Like, they're remixing and changing their songs in essentially real time. And I feel like that's sort of like hands-on tangible approach to electronic music, you don't see it very often anymore. This is the period that we find ourselves in where they are literally manipulated the samplers, manipulated the keyboards in real time. I feel so fortunate that I got to see that. Because again, you don't get to see people creating their music on stage in electronic music the same way today. And by the way, there's so many legendary collaborators on this album as well. They have a dreamy psychedelic track with Hops Anavala Manzi Star called A Sleep.

from the day. And the dance floor banger out of control with Bernard Sumner of New Order. One of my favorite breakdowns of all time is the guitar solo that comes really two-thirds of the way through the song. It reminds me of Coachella every time I think of it. And they bring back Noel Gallagher. Once again, to lay down some vocals on today's song, Let Forever Be. Well, listen, when we get back, we're going to dive into the stems.

And luxury is going to see if he could actually rebuild the main. sample for this song. You'll have a whole new level of appreciation for just how radically transformed this sample is and the Kimball Brothers production genius after this. Don't miss it. Stick around. Welcome back to One Song. Luxury. What can you tell us about the recording of this song? All right. So the album was recorded at Aaronoko Studios in South London. Nothing to do with Enya. I had to look it up just to be sure. Orinoco. The Orinoco flow was with them in a different way, shall we say. But Enya, great artist. One of my dream actually stands. Anyone with any stems, send them to me.

Man, that would be so dope. That would be cool. We could literally do an entire podcast just breaking down the equipment list. That the Chemical Brothers, what they have used over time, how it's changed, their production flow, their process. But that's not this show. We're going to focus on Let Forever Be. It should suffice to say that they used a lot of vintage synths, a lot of vintage gear.

They have huge sampler collection. They talk about their MPC 3000, but they also talk about their archives. It's unclear which of these tools were used. What we do know is that it was Ed and Tom and a third gentleman who made the record, and that third gentleman is named Steve Dub Jones, dub in quotes, who's sort of like the Bob Power maybe, if you go back to our tribe called Quest episode. He's an engineer, and his main role is when Tom and Ed, the Kems, bring in all of their samples and loops and ideas,

he helps make arrangement choices, cleaning up sounds, maybe dirtying up sounds. A lot of their process seems to revolve around jamming. So they'll kind of jam out, throwing things in and out. And then he, from my understanding of how their process works, will often kind of make editing decisions and sequencing decisions. All right, well, let's get into the stems. Let's start with the intro. I'm not sure what instrument that is.

It sounds like a violin to me. What does that sound? Is it a sample? So glad you asked. So we're going to start by breaking down this sample at the beginning and going through the song. It starts with, and I'll play for you, I'll kind of break down that opening loop. It starts with four bars.

So the intro sounds like this. Now, another thing that's beyond the scope of this episode to talk about is every single sound in that layer, because there's a lot of sample transformation and sonic transformation. Yeah. But I will tell you this. If you think about that as being four, it's a four bar loop, and the key change is important here, because we go from E flat to D flat to A flat and back to E flat. The way they're doing that is they're not playing on the guitar, those chords.

They're not playing on the keyboards those chords. They're taking a single moment of a sample, which I'm about to show you, and they're repitching it in order to get all the harmonic content of the song. Because outside of this sample and some of the synths and fluctuating sounds on top, it's drums, bass vocals. So here is that first bar. This is the E flat that it begins with. I'll play that one more time so your ears can get used to it,

and I'll show you where that comes from. So originally, the source of that sound is as a piece of this. See if you can pick out where that sound might be in when I'm about to play you. Is that part at the end? Yeah. It's the part of the end. Okay, cool. You found it.

If you pitch that part at the end up four semitones, it sounds like this. There she goes. Right? Just pitching up four semitones, you're suddenly, oh, that's where we live. But four semitones down, you're like, I kind of hear it. When you take that and reverse it, then we really start to hear what we heard in that first bar of the four bar loop. Wow. Yeah.

So what they did using one of their many. samplers. It might have been the ICA. It might have been the MPC. I'm guessing it's the MPC 3,000, because of its sequencing functions, et cetera, doesn't really matter because what they did was they made magic out of transforming the sound and the harmonic content. They pitched it up and they reversed it. So samplers can be rock mounts or they can be keyboards. I'm going to use a keyboard to demonstrate how you can repitch the sample and turn it into the loop that we hear at the beginning of the song. Here is the E-flat, the original pitched up and reversed sound. I'll play it on the keyboard. And you can pitch that up and down the keyboard.

And what they did was to make the four-bar loop of that first E-flat to a D-flat, and then they go to A-flat, and then it goes back up to A-flat. And I think that there's an octave down. I hear a lower sound. So now I'll just play the whole thing, and then I'll compare it to the loop. So that's the foundational sample in the loop. There's other things blended and transformed in there. But the harmonic content, kind of the baseline, there is a baseline, but it's just

this melodic ostinato on top. Right. We'll play that for you in the stems. But now here's the loop at the beginning of the song again. I recreated it. And now you can compare it and decide how good a job I did. Here's the real deal with all the other stuff on top. Excellent job, my man.

I think I did a pretty good job. I think you did a really good job. I think the only difference is that there's no gap in between. They made sure that the notes connected. Absolutely. The tools, the sequencing tools and using computers, I think at this point they were using a Mac or QBase maybe on Mac is one thing I saw. Their process changed many times over their 30 plus year career. But in this moment, they had the capacity to do what you said, to tighten it up, to add layers on top of it. But the primary... And the actual sound of a reversing record, like that... Yeah. Oh, I think that's actually in that sample. I mean, to my ear, but it's hard to say. There's clearly a combination of sound. in there. I want to talk about the drums. What's going up with the drums on this song?

Well, we have a two-bar loop about 127 BPM, very evocative again of Tomorrow Never Knows. Perfect, yeah. Certainly evokes a little bit of that Tomorrow Never Knows vibe. It's different because of the syncopated snare. But it's different to new songs. It's a different vibe. Do they hire a live drummer, or was this a sample from a song? It's a great question. I wasn't able to definitively find that out. To my ears, it sounds like a drummer. It sounds like there's bleed from the headphones. that the drummer is listening to the track, maybe playing over what was originally programmed with a sampled beat and they're replaying it.

It's unclear to me, but, you know, it does sound like an original beat. I don't think it's sampled from something else. One of the things I love about this song is the bass part. Yeah. You know, I will literally be walking out. Do do do do do do do. So what's going on there?

Is that a live basis? Once again, great question. I have more questions than I have answers. No problem. The sound of the bass in the stems as I procured them to me sounds like something's been filtered out, meaning it came from something else. I'm not sure, though. To my ears, it sounds performed. Again, it doesn't sound like a sample. Not really sure. But I will tell you this. It is an ostinato. It doesn't change the entire song. Even when the

key changes briefly, like in the four bar loop, it's just doing the same thing the whole time. And that's this. Which might lead us to the thing it's a sample. Yeah, it's true. That's a great point, actually. I don't know. Well, let's hear it. Not knowing kills me. It hurts so bad right now. And I'll have the drums back in. I want to be in this band. It's a good band. There was a criteria once upon a time where like,

I liked music where I wanted to be every position in the band. Like, I love what the drummer's doing. I love that that's happening here. Like, I want to play all these parts. But so that's our rhythm section. That's our two bar loop. It goes through the whole song in the rhythm section. All the changes harmonically are happening just in that sample as I was

playing you before. Beautiful. There's only one kind of chord change within the song. It goes to the four. It goes from the E flat to the A flat. That happens in the sample it sounds like this. And for context, I'll just play where the vocals, what the vocals are doing there. It's so interesting how harmony is treated because it's just the sample and the baseline. So the sample did, went from the E flat to the A flat. It sounded like this. And again, I'll just show you how they did that. They just went like this. They just went. Yeah, I hear it now. Right?

Yeah. You can hear how it's the same sound just shifted. Totally. It's a little slower sounding because that's how samplers worked in the pre-Apleton era. Yeah. If you played a lower note, it was slower. If you played a higher note, it's faster. If I go to the A flat on top, it's...

Right, it's faster because just speeding up the sample to get to the pitch being higher. And in the baseline, there's a tiny little change that I'll play for you now. Just those first two notes go to that change. But the rest of that... do-da-da-da-da-da-da-let little loopy thing stays the same. Can we hear it all together? Let's hear it all together. Great idea.

Back to the E-flat. The psychedelia of this band cannot be underscored enough. No, it takes me back to the Jimmy Hitchin's episode. Yeah. What's funny is I listen to the song and I hear so many different parts and most of it is coming out of their equipment, out of a sample. It's amazing that they're able to take all these things that they aren't actually doing. Yeah. But then make it sound like, as you said, a.

band that you want to be a part of. It goes back to minute one of Claudia Enfuso playing that first song on the first album. And I just, it immediately I grok that this is dance music. That sounds like a band is playing it. I love it. It's like it's electronic, I should say, dance music. It's post-house music existing

dance music with computers and electronics, but it feels like a rock band is playing it. There is that weird sort of like, uh, it's fun to talk about this music because you realize the limitations of the human voice. Describe it to me. Oh, yeah.

What is that going? What is going on there? So I believe what's going on there is across, what I, what's beyond the scope of this episode of the show is I did go more into depth of the sample source and found other sections that were used in layers. Oh, wow. But like it would literally, we could do a five hour long episode just to recreate all of the sounds in that loop because it's so deep and extensive.

And we will not do that. That is not what the show is about. But it is, again, samples, re-contextualized, transformed, little fragments. It's de minimis from a copyright standpoint. It is completely transformed from the original source. You know, I love this song, and it beats so much to me. But it's also like, even as I've heard this song so many times of life, I don't know what it's about. Like, technically, I don't know what the lyrics are supposed to go towards.

I do think they were trying to channel sort of like a John Lennon, sort of like 66, 67, sort of stream of conscious lyrics. But, you know, let's isolate the vocals. Let's hear what he's singing. And how does it feel like to wake up in the sun? And how does it feel like to shine up? I mean, I hear the word sun and shine on everyone. Like, it's a happy song to a certain extent. Yeah.

You know what? As I was listening, I was wondering if it's a happy song or is it like a come down after the drugs? the next morning. There's a lot of that on the film. The vibe that I'm getting is like the sun's coming up and you're like,

how do I feel? Yeah. How does it feel? By the way, new order. By the way, how does it feel Blue Monday? That's not unintentional. How does it feel?

That's not unintentional. I never saw that connection before. I'm just noticing that. So how does it feel to leave the hacienda wasted out of your mind? The sun's coming up but you're still tripping.

You've been listening to loud music and parting with your friends all night. How does it feel? Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it doesn't feel good. There's a little bit of that Manchester attitude going on, especially in verse number three. He says,

and how does it feel like to make it happening? And how does it feel like to breathe with everything? Yeah, that world happening is very 60s. Happening London. And to breathe with everything sort of sounds what you were saying about like, it's the day after. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But don't forget that you're going to spend a lifetime sitting in the gutter.

Well, yeah, then he turns dark. That's to me like, okay, oh, we just came out of the brave. It's 8 a.m. People are going to work. I'm a piece of shit. I'm going to go sit in the gutter where I belong. It actually reminds me of the streets, that rapper of the streets, who famously, you know, he's like, imagine all the leaders of all pills

that they're managing the morning after. Always cause a disaster. You know, like, you know, it's that. It's the disaster of the morning after. I've gone too hard. I need to scale back. Never again. Never again.

I've been watching all, rewatching peep show one of my favorites that comes of all time. And it takes place kind of, it's in London or kind of around this time. And the vibe of this song and the vibe of that show really connect to me. It's like these two wasteoids listening to this kind of like doing drugs and being terrible people. And this is maybe the soundtrack to their lives. Maybe so. I will also say as many times I've heard this song, the actual chorus, what he says on the refrain.

Can we hear a little bit of the refrain? It's so good. I always thought to scream my symphony. Okay. What is it? A symphony. It's scream a symphony, which is not drastically different. Okay, yeah, it sounds like scream a symphony, but there's an M at the end of scream.

I still hear scream lies. It elides into the sound. It does sound like the elation of, it's like a guttural elation. It's like, what is that Shakespeare line? We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. It's a little bit of that vibe of just like, man, we're human, we're parting, we're having fun, and we're all going to die. What a great 90s sentiment. Can you play a little bit of verse three for us?

How does it feel like to make it happening? How does it feel? So, a wasis sounding. It really is a perfect collaboration between those two acts. They go together like peanut butter and jelly. The melodic choices that the Gallagher brothers make, they very much evoke the Beatles. Part of it is because they do this combination.

It's like a sing-songy. The first three notes are, how does it? It's right in a row. the third, fourth, fifth, you know. And then he jumps a fifth. How does it feel? That's an octave from that first note.

It's a really, that's hard to do. It's hard to jump a fifth. He's a good singer, from what I'm saying. He's a great singer. From a writer's point of view, even though I'll say like, oh, these words don't really mean anything. Yeah.

They definitely get you to feel something. Like Wonderwall being something. I think sometimes it's okay, like what actually is a champagne supernova? I think sometimes it's okay to inject words that make the singer feel something, even if it doesn't mean a whole lot. And I think that that's where the meaning derives from

from the feeling you get when you actually sing these lyrics. It does feel like Noel got the tape, listened to the track, you know, kind of carve it out a melody and put some lyrics to it, or maybe they came at the same time. But my guess is that a lot of it was sound that led to, oh, that sound that in my melody, like he probably did like da, da, da, da, de da, da. and then sort of put, like, match to the sound words that would fit there.

Yeah. Because it doesn't have a linear narrative or a linear meaning. But it has a meaning. It sounds like Bob Dylan's storytelling. Yes, that's right. But it is evocative of a feeling. By the way, interesting that like the title of the song, like the chorus, like, it's not really what is sung as a repeated refrain.

If anything, the repeated refrain would be like, scream a symphony. Like I wonder if they, I wonder if an early title of the song was like scream a symphony. And then they were like, wait a second. the Verve, Bitter's sweet symphony. Like, maybe... You know, it's funny. I think Let Forever Be sounds the most beetalish. You know, and I think that they were definitely aiming for a Beatles vibe on this.

Tomorrow never knows. Forever. Forever. Yeah. You know, if you found out there was a Beatles song called Let Forever Be, considering they did a song called Let It Be. Wait. And if you found out that there was a beetle song called Strawberry Fields Forever,

it makes a lot of sense. You might make some connections. Yeah, exactly. Luxuries, Spears the song is, we'd be remiss. if we did not discuss the Let Forever Be video. We would be remiss. And if there's one thing on the show that we never are, it's remiss. We refuse to remiss.

Yeah, so the video was directed by Michelle Gondry, the great French director. In his early days, of course, was a video director and did several Chemical Brothers videos. Oh, he's part of that graduated class of the 90s music video. You've got Michelle Gondry, you've got Chris Cuttingham, you've got Spike Jones. Like, it's so hard to even think about those. All those wonderful music videos that really define. the decade as much as the movies of the TV shows. And they're very conceptual and they're very psychedelic

and they just really map to the music in a way that they're indelibly linked to the song. They turn a lot of us on to film. In fact, Tom Roles speaks about telling Michelle that they wanted to achieve a psychedelic effect, but more of a modern psychedelic effect. Separate from the start of the Paisley's 60s

aesthetic. Let's watch a little clip from Let Forever Be, the music video by Michelle Gould. For those of you listening on audio, only please check out this video on your own time. There is a lady who's basically running around a set of both practical special effects and then sort of like tricks within the mirror, smoking mirror sort of thing going on. It's very trippy. You don't always know what's real. I was recently on a United Airlines flight and they used some of the same techniques in the

safety video now. But like in the 90s, this was like so kind of good. Made you watch it. It's a good idea. It's effective. It's so cool. It's so cool how they do. that. There's something really timeless about it too, because even though maybe the tech was of the moment to do that, and maybe this post is Matrix around this time, that first Matrix? Yeah, 99. There's obviously some kind of like thought about that that sort of famous matrix, you know, multiplicity, you know, type style of shooting, right? Right. It doesn't seem stuck in that era to me. It seems really timeless. It seems that there's something really classic sounding about it. It's so good. Yeah. So now that we've listened to this song, luxury, tell us about the splits.

How do they break down? So the splits are, this feels fair to me that, um, that Noel gets 50% right out the back because he's the top line writer. Yeah. And then between Tom and Ed, between the Kems, interesting split. It's actually not. It's actually 40% Tom and 10% to Ed.

Oh, man. So interesting. I suppose the both of them, especially at this point, we're probably getting their own kit, their own gear together, their own separate studios, and maybe showing up on the day and collaborating with what they both are working on.

So maybe Tom started this track and Ed made some contributions. That'd be my speculation why those numbers are different. Talk about the legacy of Let Forever B. I love this one quote from Tom Rale, as he said, it's more emotional of probably the most human-sounding computer music that we've ever done. And his collaborator, Ed actually said,

organic electronics, we like to call it. That's what they see is sort of the legacy of Left Forever Be and the Surrender album. Luxury, what do you see as the legacy of this song? I think the legacy to me of this song and the Chemical Brothers, especially in this moment in 1999, this is 20 years into this cross-pollination of genres that kind of has this pinnacle in this song.

Not only is it bringing in the acid house, the brakes, the break beats, all of the electronic things that as DJs we've been talking about are their career. It brings this other side of their background, which is the fandom of Jesus is Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, band and rock and new order stuff. You've got the oasis meeting chemical beats merger literally on the song with a melody and a top line, which is a pop hit. It's like a pop hit with all that stuff, almost hidden underneath it. So the one thing it makes me think a lot about is this idea of rockism. We've kind of alluded to it on the other episodes. But like the Chemical Brothers are just a wonderful example of how in the UK there was rockism. There was this idea just to define the term.

There's this idea that like anything that isn't coming from mostly men with guitars from the rock tradition, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, whatever, isn't authentic. That there's an absence of authenticity once you put machines into the equation. So entire genres are off the table. Their entire bumper stickers to say drum machines have no soul. That entire attitude is very raucous because it presumes that one is good and one is bad. It's just right there in the title. So what they've done is really successfully kind of merged an anti-rockist aesthetic with actual rock

in a really creative new way to bring together the acid house, the break beats, and the rock and roll. It's in this one kind of perfect three minutes of a song. Totally. And I think for my purposes, I think that the legacy of this song is that, that this is one of those times when you were able to merge several genres into one really compelling piece of music that borrows, you know, heavily from the past. Yeah. You know, there's definitely a retro strain in this song, but pairs it with what was then considered temporary. And I think that part of it is very cool.

It's easy to forget that, you know, Dabug became sort of popular after the fact. During most of their career, they were not mainstream popular. at the time of this release, Chemical Bruns is a much bigger band. I'm so glad you brought that up. It's part due to the fact that they sounded more like a rock band in their electronic music production.

The Dapunk, which was always looking at Chicago House is sort of the template. Chicago House music. Well said. Absolutely. And Discovery, because Dap Punk, I think the two of them at the time they both came out. Chemicals coming first. Yeah, I think Sir Ritter comes out one year and then Discovery comes out in 2000.

Dap Punk are absolutely doing a similar thing in terms of their influences at being a duo using electronic sounds and sampling. But they're much more sonically in the house area, the disco and funk in house area. By the time they get to discovery their next record, they are becoming more eclectic, perhaps influenced by the chems, but that record's a flop. To your point, it's not until Get Lucky, which is their last record, that they become massive stars and then they close up shop overnight. Yeah, it's really not a few years later.

performance in 2006 that they sort of like become the leaders of this electronic music. And groups like MGMT and Tava Pala, they wouldn't exist without that Puck. They wouldn't exist without the Kibbs because I do believe that the Kibbs helped push this electronic psychedelic rock sound to the forefront of what was then considered pop. And bringing it full circle, it happens in this moment in the late 90s, as you were talking about in America where we have this British invasion. And it should be mentioned that at the time it has. happened at the time we were getting the Chemical Brothers and the prodigy in America.

It was marketed. It was given the title, electronica, right? Which I don't, I like that, because it is electronic music. It kind of encompasses the eclecticness of it. It does imply that all these different electronic threads meet in one place. Right. And that's not inaccurate. But part of why that's important is because it was just far enough after disco demolition

and a new generation is coming in. It's like, let's try marketing dance music to Americans again, but a little differently. and it's coming from across the pond, so maybe it'll feel a little bit different. Yeah. So I think that's interesting to kind of make the 90s connection that way. Yeah, there's their way of making it.

Pallitable, accessible, right. I do hope that the same way people went back and discovered those old Dadpuck albums, that they'll go back and discover the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy and all this music from the late 90s, early 2000s that I think was really, really interesting and didn't get the spins that it deserved.

Totally agree, yeah. Okay, luxury is time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut. or a hit a gym with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other, how would you like to go first? Well, the first song I have is by Spiritualized. It's called Electric Mainline. And I thought of this song as we've been doing this episode

because it's of the same moment. This is another British band. But another thing, and I'll describe afterwards after we hear the song, they do something live that really blew my mind when I heard this song live a number of years ago. So that goes on a little longer. In fact, it goes on for about eight minutes like that

with just little things coming and going, but it's one drone. And the album that's from it's called Pure Phase. And when I saw Spiritualize Live, they did this thing that just absolutely transfixed me, which is there's one sound that goes through the entire song we just heard. Yeah. This one drone that's kind of phasing, pure phase.

They did that the entire concert. Wow. So it unified the concert experience by having a sound going through the whole thing. It was so hypnotic. And I think these guys are coming from a similar place as the Kems, as far as bringing together rock and dance and sound and making it into a transfixing experience. I love that. I love that.

That's such an interesting thing. Just have one sound with the whole concert. I never forgot about it because it's a sound that you don't get tired of hearing. It's just it just scratches your brain in that really pleasurable, your pleasure centers in all the right ways. What about you, Diala?

What is your one more song this week? Well, since we're talking about the Chemical Brothers, I want to play one more song by them. This week would have marked the 50th birthday for an old friend of mine. Unfortunately, he did pass away. And I do remember being young, driving in a convertible

with him. And we used to sing the song at the top of our lungs. So I'm going to dedicate this to David Brown. And this song is called Star Guitar. This is also doing that phase thing from the other thing. So much phasing. It's the phase. So much flanging. Yeah, if I can implore

dance music to do anything, bring back the psychedelic in your head sort of like space to it all. It doesn't have to all be, you know, just for the purposes of dancing. Speaking of space, that song samples this. And it's one of the situations where the title of the song gives you a little clue, Star Guitar, Even the Court Changes. Who's that by? What's that song? That's by a gentleman called David Bowie. That song is called Starman, Star Guitar. The Guitar from Star Man, Star Guitar. Holy! How have I never looked that up?

So, so wonderfully flipped into something completely different. You truly learned something new every day. Sorry, you just, something about you. You said, by the way, so sorry about your friend. And I wanted to just respond to that as well. I didn't know. I was going to choose that as one more. I had another song chose, but it would have been his 50th this week.

So we're recording this episode on the day that my friend Teresa took her own life 18 years ago. Oh, my God. I can't believe that. So we love you, Teresa. And to Mary, if you're listening. Mary Duncan, we love you, we love your family. Oh, shit.

I had to do the tear jerking. But yes, that person really affected me. So we have people in our lives that matter, and we give them our love with this episode. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. We do read those DMs. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, Diala, L-L-O, and on TikTok at D-A-L-R-R. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-Y. and on TikTok at Luxury XX.

And you can follow our podcast at One Song Podcasts on Instagram and TikTok. For exclusive content, you can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for One Song podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, we think that means you like the podcast. So please don't forget to give us five stars, leave a review,

and share us with someone who you think would like. like the show, it really helps us keep it going. Luxury help us in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Biala Riddell. And this is one song. We will see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duenas. Our video

editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo. Mixed by Michael Harmon and Engineering by Eric Hicks. Production Supervision by Razak Boykin. Additional production support from Z. Taylor. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric

Eric Wilde and Leslie Guam.