Hear The Beat

"During the sixties Adelaide had a thriving music scene. Once used inner city basements and cellars became dark, hot, noisy and smoky clubs and discos. Venues like Alan Hale's Beat Basement, The Scene, Alex Innocenti's The Cellar and Jim Popoff's Big dadd's filled with teen-agers to hear discs spun by local DJs and local groups pounding out R&​B and hits of the day. Bands like the Masters Apprentices, Blues Rags'n Hollers, Southern Gentlemen, Dust'n Ashes, Blues Syndicate, The Vikings/​Why 4, The Others, Sounds Of Silence and many others made their presence felt. Some were lucky enough to release one or maybe two 45s at best, however the emergence of a number of independant recording facilities enables many more to record demos and tracks to mime to on local TV music shows like Action or In Time. This is what we have here, hidden away for over 40 years, the fruits of that youthful energy hopefully getting some recognition, not afforded them at the time.''

The act with the first arena-sized sound in the electronica movement, the Chemical Brothers united such varying influences as Public Enemy, Cabaret Voltaire, and My Bloody Valentine to create a dance-rock-rap fusion which rivaled the best old-school DJs on their own terms – keeping a crowd of people on the floor by working through any number of groove-oriented styles featuring unmissable samples, from familiar guitar riffs to vocal tags to various sound effects. And when the duo (Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons) decided to supplement their DJ careers by turning their bedrooms into recording studios, they pioneered a style of music (later termed big beat) remarkable for its lack of energy loss from the dancefloor to the radio. Chemical Brothers albums were less collections of songs and more hour-long journeys, chock-full of deep bomb-studded beats, percussive breakdowns, and effects borrowed from a host of sources. All in all, the duo proved one of the few exceptions to the rule that intelligent dance music could never be bombastic or truly satisfying to the seasoned rock fan; it's hardly surprising that they were one of the few dance acts to enjoy simultaneous success in the British/American mainstream and in critical quarters.

There's a good reason why the Move's eponymous 1968 debut album sounds like the work of two or three different bands – actually, befitting a band with multiple lead singers, there's more than one reason. First, there's that lead singer conundrum. Carl Wayne was the group's frontman, but Roy Wood wrote the band's original tunes and sometimes took the lead, and when the group covered a rock & roll class, they could have rhythm guitarist Trevor Burton sing (as they did on Eddie Cochran's "Weekend") or drummer Bev Bevan (as they did on the Coasters' "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart").