The Chemical Brothers
‘Further’
(Virgin)

It begins with the unholiest racket heard anywhere not Crystal Castles-related in 2010, and ends with a wholeheartedly affecting barrage of retro-futurism that puts numerous newer fixtures in the technoscenti bowingly in the shade. In between, ‘Swoon’ performs squealy Rubik’s Cube manoeuvres on Orbital’s ‘Are We Here?’, ‘Another World’’s squelches and summery samba inflections see the Brothers at their most unambiguously positivist,‘Horse Power’ does indeed contain an abundance of whinnying as well as ‘Radioactivity’-referencing Kraftwerkian vocals and no end of satanic rave cornering, and the preposterous ‘Escape Velocity’ scampers luminously into an epic selection of exhilarating, endlessly Pavlovian-rushprovoking wormholes. Suggestions that their heyday might be a halcyon thing are unexpectedly unwarranted: ‘Further’ turns out to be the Chemicals’ finest work by quite some distance.

Iain Moffat