The Second Summer Of Love they called it and when that awful "Daisy" scene started up, it seemed like they were coming back in through the back door: tie-dyes, flares, inane and highly suspect messages of peace'n'luv, 22-minute-long "songs" and all the other excess baggage that went into proclaiming the second coming of the Hippies. Remade, remodelled and repackaged as New Age, the nightmare had started up again and as soon as people started name checking Tangerine Dream in their list of influences, it was time to fight for the soul of music. Again.
But as the 1990s wore on, it was found that the drugs didn't work as well as they used to and the chemically-enhanced good vibes soon gave way to something more muscular and earthy. "Lad techno", it was called - and it came primarily in the shape of The Chemical Brothers, whose aggressive and thrusting block rockin' beats neatly merged hip-hop and rock'n'roll - which was just as well because when it comes to white dance music, you can't have one without the other.
Previous to The Chemical Brothers, techno had a cold/Teutonic image (mainly because of its Krautrock roots) but the grimy, urban clatter that resulted when Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands set the 303 against the breakbeats has resulted in one of those headline-friendly indie/dance crossover successes - and, like The Happy Mondays before them, The Chemical Brothers are picking up fans (and sales) in both disparate camps.
If the first album, Exit Planet Dust, hinted at something which could be called hip-hop'n'roll, this year's Dig Your Own Hole testified that techno had balls and could spin your head as well as any full-on three-guitar-band racket. As evidence of how far techno had travelled, consider how The Chemical Brothers even managed to rope in an unreconstructed retro head like Noel Gallagher to do some vocals on the album.
From the opening track, Block Rocking Beats (which comes complete with a Schooly D sample) it was quite clear that this was the Big Beat militia going through their manoeuvres. The following mix of grinding grooves, explosive guitars, electro beats and mashed-up vocal chants sustain the album all the way through to the nine-minute finale, Private Psychedelic Reel, where you half expect Rick Wakeman (in a cloak) to emerge from the speakers, with his hands up admitting defeat.
"It's weird how some people still view dance music and rock music as totally contradictory," says Ed from the band. "We've used vocals on some of our tracks by, not just Noel Gallagher, but Tim Burgess from The Charlatans and Beth Orton as well - and they are all into what we're doing. Tim may be in a guitar band, but he's just as knowledgeable about dance music. When Noel Gallagher talks about the best times of his life, it's always about Sunrise parties and the Hacienda. They're just into it, as we are; they absorb dance in the same way we do rock music."
It's not as simple as that, though: some techno DJs say that The Chemical Brothers' stuff is just "music for students, it's not real techno . . . I mean, they used to play Oasis and Stone Roses records when they DJ-ed". Ed replies that people don't really know where to place their music. "I know dance people feel it doesn't belong and some felt that it was wrong working with Noel Gallagher; some people have a problem with the fact that our music rocks. With Dig Your Own Hole we went after that sort of sound because we felt the `Chemical Beats' sound - the acid over the breakbeats - had been done pretty well on our first album and it really lost its appeal for us. We had to try out different things, so it was time to make weirder sounds that other people couldn't make. Out of the blue, it was a lot different from what previously a lot of people knew us for."
Sell-out techno traitors or purveyors of "right here, right now" electronic music, make your own mind up when The Chemical Brothers (with Carl Cox supporting) play The Point Depot next Wednesday night.
Dig Your Own Hole is available on the Freestyle Dust/Virgin label.
