Musical Reactions

British electronic duo The Chemical Brothers will make its debut in Moscow this week, playing two concerts at B1 Maximum. One of the originators of "big beat," the band has won two Grammy Awards for its meld of psychedelia, funk and hip-hop and has been eagerly awaited on the city's dance music scene.

The most intriguing element to the Chemical Brothers' sound is their predilection for psychedelic sounds, which seldom appear in electronic dance music. "I'm a big fan of psychedelic music," band member Tom Rowlands said in a recent e-mail interview. He talked of his admiration for a handful of German experimental "krautrock" bands of the 1970s, such as Harmonia and Cluster. In their music, he said, "the sound is as important as the notes."

The band members, Rowlands and Ed Simons, met in 1992 while studying history at Manchester University and started out DJing together. To begin with, they called themselves the Dust Brothers, borrowing the name of a U.S. production duo who worked with the Beastie Boys. Their first track, "Song to the Siren," was recorded using a home stereo system, but it was picked up by influential DJ Andrew Weatherall, who started playing it regularly in his sets. He went on to sign the duo to his label, Junior Boy's Own, and released "Song to the Siren" as a single in 1993.

The duo stands out for its streamlined production values and inclusion of original material alongside samples culled from other sources. There are no tracks where the music is totally sampled, Rowlands said, and there are quite a few cuts where all the music is freshly recorded.

While recording their own tracks, the Brothers continued to play gigs as DJs, and one of their regular nights was the Heavenly Sunday Social Club at the Albany pub on London's Great Portland Street. This DJ night was frequented in the mid-1990s by the likes of Noel Gallagher of Oasis, James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers and the Charlatan's Tim Burgess.

All these musicians asked the Brothers to remix their bands' tracks and later collaborated on original tracks. Gallagher maintained a rapport with the band for several years and lent his vocals to a couple of the duo's own songs.

The Brothers' popularity grew so much by 1995 that the duo was forced to change its name after a threat of legal action from the original Dust Brothers. They chose "Chemical" in place of "Dust," inspired by one of their tracks, "Chemical Beats." Extrapolating on the name change, they named their first album, released that year, "Exit Planet Dust."

That album was well received, but the duo's second album, "Dig Your Own Hole," put them firmly on the map in 1997. The first song off the album, "Block Rockin' Beats" is now considered a dance classic. With an infectious bass line sample from the 23 Skidoo song "Coup," the song went to Number One in Britain, was named single of the week by New Musical Express magazine and later earned a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

In Moscow, the Brothers will perform tracks from their latest album, "We Are the Night," which was released in July.

"I've always wanted to visit Russia since studying your country's history at university," Rowlands said. "Hopefully, there will be a good crowd of excited and interested people."

The Chemical Brothers plays at 8 p.m. Wed. and Thurs. at B1 Maximum, located at 11 Ulitsa Ordzhonikidze. Metro Leninsky Prospekt. Tel. 648-6777.