IN New York, the Chemical Brothers are best known for igniting dance floors at the city’s hottest night clubs, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that they’ll be playing outdoors – during broad daylight, no less – at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield tomorrow.
“We’re hoping that there’s going to be at least some tinge of darkness in the air because we rely a lot on our visual show,” says Ed Simons, half of the Grammy-winning electronica duo.
“We’ve got big screens behind us and a light show. [But] we play huge outdoors festivals all over Europe, so playing outdoors is a pretty natural thing for us to do.
“This gig coming up combines two thing we really love, playing outdoors and playing a great city – New York has an impor-
tant pull for us because it was the first place that our music meant anything outside England,” Simons adds.
To wrap up their tour supporting their fifth studio album, “Push the Button,” the Chemical Brothers are headlining the Ultra.NY concert, which begins at 4:30, alongside fellow international electronica and dance music superstars including Paul Oakenfold, Danny Tenaglia, Mylo and Timo Maas.
It’s been a while since those names were batted around mainstream music and radio the way they were back in the late ’90s, when the Chemical Brothers’ “Out of Control” was in regular rotation stateside. (Now, their single “Galvanize” featuring Q-Tip has garnered some airtime.)
But just because the mainstream stopped paying attention to the genre doesn’t mean the underground did, too.
“It didn’t stop people still making the music and it didn’t stop filling clubs because people like dancing,” says Simons, who relishes the fact that he isn’t being asked to do “20 interviews a day explaining the history of electronic music.”
Twelve years have passed since Simons and Tom Rowlands – then medieval history students at Manchester University – first met and formed what would eventually become the Chemical Brothers. While the success of their records has waxed and waned over the years, one thing has remained constant.
“How we are in the studio and what we like about making music hasn’t changed. But 10 years ago, you’re very eager to get your music over, quite keen to get out there and play bigger concerts and have people hear what you’re doing,” says Simons.
“Now, maybe we’re not as hell-bent about getting things across. We tend to do concerts or things just for their own sake, for the enjoyment of doing them, rather than for some sort of progression.”
Still, the Chemical Brothers are eager to get back into the studio to start working on a sixth album.
“We haven’t really made any music all this year and we’re really excited about making one more record. We still feel like we’ve got some good music in us, and we need to get into the studio to see if that’s the case,” he says.
Tickets for the all-ages groove-a-thon Ultra.NY are $59.75. (It’s $94.75 for a combo package to the show and after-party at Crobar, but you must be 18 or over.) For more information and tickets sales, visit ultranewyork.com or head over to Satellite Records at 259 Bowery, between Houston and Prince streets; (212) 995-1744.