The First Time I Heard Them
One of the most unexpected and genuinely exciting developments in recent electronic music history arrived in April 2026, when Tom Rowlands announced TOMORA — a new project with Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora. Their debut album Come Closer, released April 17, 2026 on Capitol Records, arrived after the two had been collaborating across each other’s projects for years — Aurora contributed to the Chemical Brothers’ No Geography album, and Rowlands produced on Aurora’s What Happened to the Heart?
The album appeared with almost no advance warning — TOMORA’s name showed up on the Coachella 2026 lineup with zero context before the project was announced, triggering exactly the kind of speculation that the music press runs on. The 12-track record is genuinely distinct from anything in either artist’s back catalogue. It is not a Chemical Brothers record featuring a vocalist, and it is not an Aurora record with bigger production. It is its own thing.
That Rowlands is willing to do this — to step outside the Chemical Brothers name and make something that cannot be explained by reference to his existing reputation — says something important about how he approaches making music. The same restless quality that produced the shift from Exit Planet Dust to Surrender to No Geography is still operating. The address book just has new names in it now.
For the 30th anniversary of Exit Planet Dust in 2025, there was new merchandise and a renewed appreciation online for an album that had not aged as much as you might expect from something made in a bedroom in Manchester in 1994. Some records earn their anniversaries. This is one of them.
What DJs Can Learn From Them
I want to make this practical, because I think The Chemical Brothers have lessons for anyone who is serious about electronic music.
The first lesson is about the mix. Their early club DJ work — which you can hear fragments of in the “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” mix album they released in 1995 — showed a profound understanding of how to move a room through a two-hour set. Not by playing the obvious records but by building tension and releasing it, by introducing something unfamiliar and then giving the crowd something familiar right when they needed it. The structure of a great DJ set and the structure of a great Chemical Brothers album are not that different.
The second lesson is about genre promiscuity. They were never a techno act or a house act or a hip-hop act. They were all of those things in different proportions at different times. As I write about in my piece on mastering the mix, the DJs who develop a genuine musical identity — rather than simply playing what is fashionable in their particular scene — are the ones who build careers rather than moments.
The third lesson is about live performance. Every DJ has to ask themselves at some point what they are offering an audience beyond pressing play on a playlist. The Chemical Brothers’ answer to that question has always been total commitment. If you are playing music for people in a room, the music deserves everything you have.
Their Influence on the Seoul Circuit
It is a longer chain of influence than it might appear, but The Chemical Brothers are part of why Seoul’s underground electronic scene sounds the way it does today. The DJs I know who are doing the most interesting work in the house and techno rooms in Hongdae and Euljiro grew up listening to exactly these albums — they absorbed the lesson that electronic music does not have to choose between physicality and emotional complexity.
The history of that influence — from the British big beat explosion through its second-generation disciples in Europe, through the Korean DJs who absorbed European club culture in the 2000s and 2010s, through to the rooms operating in Seoul today — is a genuinely fascinating thread. I try to trace some of it in my brief history of DJing post, though that piece covers more ground than the Chemical Brothers alone.
FAQ
What was the Chemical Brothers’ breakthrough album?
Dig Your Own Hole (1997) is the record most often cited as the breakthrough, containing “Block Rockin’ Beats” and the Noel Gallagher collaboration “Setting Sun”, which reached number one in the UK. Their debut Exit Planet Dust (1995) established the blueprint, but Dig Your Own Hole brought it to a mainstream audience.
Are the Chemical Brothers still making music?
Yes. Their tenth studio album For That Beautiful Feeling was released in 2023 and received critical acclaim. They remain one of the most consistently active acts in electronic music and continue to headline major festivals worldwide.
What genre is the Chemical Brothers?
They are primarily associated with big beat, but their catalogue spans psychedelic electronic, progressive house, techno, ambient, and alternative rock-influenced territory. Genre classification has always been something they resist rather than embrace.
Who are the two members of the Chemical Brothers?
Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons. They met at Manchester University in 1989, started performing together under the name The Dust Brothers, and changed to The Chemical Brothers in 1994 following legal pressure from the American production duo of the same name.
