They're baaaaaack

Cast your mind back. The year is 1995. Paul Keating is PM, Downer is Opposition Leader, Super League is making steps forward, Qantas is privatised, the Qld Parliament is hung (wow!), and the Warringah Council becomes the first council in Australia to use dung beetles to pick up dog droppings (it really is amazing what people put on Wikipedia).

More to the point the Australian music scene is somewhat violently divided. Nirvana is big, Silverchair takes note of this and win a SBS new band competition with a song called Tomorrow (If I seem a little jaded about this I can explain why). On the other hand Peter Andre has just enjoyed a big year, whilst Maria Carey and N-Trance have dominated the charts for most of the year. Essentially there's a musical war between grunge, pop or if you're on the fringe you might be a raver and listen to that "bloody computer doof-doof stuff which has no right to be called music".

Then they came.

Artist: The Chemical Brothers
Album: Exit Planet Dust

The first ones to really make great songs out of electronica. Not just beat mix records or rip off old tracks (although they have re-done some things brilliantly). They are ground breaking. They frequently merge rock, pop and house music and artists from all genres work with them. And they have not stopped breaking ground ever since.

If there's one thing you know about them, it's that their next album will always produce something you didn't expect, and that it will shape the future of a lot of music that will be released in the next few years.

And now it is here.