Today, The Chemical Brothers shared their euphoric new single, “Got To Keep On,” along with the cover art and track listing for their forthcoming album, No Geography, which will be released on April 12 by Astralwerks.
The album pre-order is underway, here. Fans who pre-order No Geography in digital format will instantly receive “Got To Keep On” plus the previously released tracks “MAH” and “Free Yourself.” No Geography will also be available on vinyl. A limited edition 12’’ vinyl of “Free Yourself” / “MAH” vinyl is now available for pre-order at the Astralwerks store.
The British duo will take their deeply psychedelic live show across the globe in a series of arena shows and festival headlines following the album’s release. In North America, they will headline the Corona Capital Guadalajara Festival on May 11 and play a sold-out May 12 concert at Pepsi Center WTC in Mexico City. Limited tickets remain for the two Los Angeles dates – May 15 at Shrine Expo Hall and May 16 at the Greek Theatre – and their May 17 show at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The Black Madonna will join as a special guest for the U.S. shows. See below for full itinerary and tickets, including international dates.
At some point during the recording of No Geography, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons pushed the reset button. It began with the construction of a studio within a studio – a tiny makeshift room that housed the kind of kit they had previously used to record the bulk of their first two albums; equipment that had sat gathering (freestyle) dust in Tom’s attic for the last 20 years. That experimental space offered freedom, inspiring them to create music and tell their own story in a way they hadn’t done for years.
Wherever possible, things were done differently. Randomness and jagged edges were encouraged, and songs were built around vocal samples; voices were wound tightly into music that Tom and Ed found themselves following wherever it led them. Snatches of dialogue from the late ’60s experimental Dial-A-Poem project were chosen that reflected the mood in the studio. Songs were road tested in front of audiences as part of their 2018 live set and honed in regular DJ sets the world over.
The resulting album hurtles from righteous rage to wide-eyed wonder, from half-speed acid to jacking house and dreamy analog noise. No Geography stands alongside the duo’s classic debut Exit Planet Dust and the rabbit-hole psychedelia of the 2010s Further – albums that respectively wrote the rules and then reimagined them entirely.
Several tracks feature vocals by Norwegian singer/songwriter Aurora, who wrote and recorded parts in their studio in close collaboration with the band. Japanese rapper Nene features on the opening track, “Eve of Destruction.” No Geography also features the previously released tracks “Free Yourself” and “MAH,” which have already racked up more than 7.5 million combined global streams across all platforms. Rolling Stone praised “Free Yourself” as “a euphoric, multi-faceted odyssey of blistering synths and deep grooves” while The Guardian hailed “MAH” as “a short & bloody ride into our modern media psychosis.”
No Geography is The Chemical Brothers’ ninth studio album. It follows their GRAMMY®-nominated 2015 album, Born In the Echoes, which Pitchfork praised as “some of the best pure pop songs Rowlands and Simons have ever made.” The Chemical Brothers have sold more than 12 million albums and six million singles worldwide. They have had six No. 1 albums in the U.K. and were the first electronic act ever to receive a GRAMMY®, winning in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category for “Block Rockin’ Beats” – the first of their four GRAMMY wins.