Chemical Brothers - Morning Lemon - the DYOH B-sides - 1998

In 1997 the Chemical Brothers knocked it out of the park with Dig Your Own Hole.  I had already purchased Exit Planet Dust and was really thrilled by it, but DYOH was where they went "mainstream" and helped bring the Electronica genre to the forefront along with Orbital, Prodigy, Underworld, Aphex Twin, Moby, Orb, Fluke and others.

The Chemical Brothers were a shade different than the rest, as they relied heavily on samples from early funk and soul albums amongst other genres.  Yes, there is still a lot of keyboards/synths, but they were wrapped around these incredibly unique samples.

By 1998 all of the singles had been released, and I had a nice disc of b-sides to fit snugly between DYOH and Surrender.  The cover is a photo I pulled off the net when I googled "beach sunrise" and then plugged through a host of PS filters and photo adjustments.  Once I completely overexposed the photo, I knew I had something worthy of a Brothers disc.  I like this cover a lot...

BUT, as good as DYOH was, I still strongly preferred Surrender.  But, that's another post from June 24th of this year....

Chemical Brothers - Morning Lemon - the DYOH B-sides - 1998

Chemical Brothers - Diamond Sky - the Surrender B-Sides - 1999

I always loved the Chemical Brothers cover art.  Posterized and retro, very representative of their style and sound.  Their music is pretty good.  I like it.  I'm not in love with it.  I'm not going to drop mega-coin for anything by them, and I don't listen to them on a regular basis.  But they're good, and I'll listen to them every once in a while and enjoy myself.

This album came out shortly before I moved to Kansas City and I listened to it regularly at work and in the car.  The b-sides were interesting, and I loved Bernard's vocals on Out of Control.  Noel did pretty good, and, in fact, all the vocalists did great jobs.  But Bernard's were the best.  It sounded like a ravey sorta funky electro New Order.

I thought the b-sides were too experimental to mix into the album set, plus I'd run over the 80 minute mark on the CD limit.  I'm not really a fan of any of the remixes offered, as it's hard for a mixer to offer their interpretation without destroying the integrity of the Chemical Brothers sound, except for that slammin' Sasha mix.  That being said, I simply put the b-sides on their own disc, essentially making a album addendum for Surrender.  A little Surrender EP of sorts.

I used the cover to Let Forever Be, the best from the Surrender singles, so it maintains the art theme for the album and singles.  Nothing special, but it blends in well....

Chemical Brothers - Diamond Sky - the Surrender B-Sides - 1999