The Chemical Brothers: Chemical reactions

The Chemical Brothers spent 18 months working on their new album. But it hasn't had quite the reception they hoped for. Stephen Dowling meets the disgruntled duo

The Chemical Brothers' studio, in a squat, unfriendly building just a stone's throw from the Old Kent Road, in south London is a sight to behold. It is truly, terminally messy.

Newspapers and magazines, records, ashtrays, esoteric musical equipment and god knows what, fight for space on shelves or in volcano-like piles on the floor, surrounding the banks of mixing desks. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons – who are the Chemical Brothers – spend anything up to 18 months in here making their albums. You can tell.

Downstairs, there's a newspaper cutting proclaiming Bermondsey's new cultural cachet. Robert De Niro has bought a flat here and local newspaper fantasies of grey and gritty SE1 turning into the new Tribeca – more bijou eateries than you can shake a cheese stick at – are in full swing. The Chems themselves are less convinced.

"Nice part of the world Bermondsey, Robert De Niro's moving in, you know," Simons says. "Yeah. Bob'll be walking down to the Tower Tandoori, getting his sweets and beer from Costcutter," Rowlands answers, draping himself over a sofa in the studio's TV room.

The Old Kent Road has been the musical home to the Chemicals for the past four years. During an interview in France they were asked what the studio's neighbourhood was like. They described it "via the Monopoly board". "It's on one of the brown squares, cos it's near the Old Kent Road which is the cheapest thing on the board," says Rowlands. He looks at Simons, "60 quid?" "Sixty quid," Simons confirms, quick as a flash. "Wouldn't get you much now, would it?" tuts Rowlands. "Not with Robert De Niro moving in," replies Simons.

This is the Chemical Brothers of legend in full swing: old mates with a decade's worth of private jokes, an inbuilt radar for each other's mannerisms and idiosyncrasies and an unerring ability to finish each other's sentences. Ask probing questions about the building block of new album Come With Us or the lyrics Rowlands wrote for the elegant ballad "The State We're In" (sung by longtime chum Beth Orton) and they'll murmur evasively, as if unsure of the questions.

But once an in joke or an aside starts, it runs and runs and runs, thanks to the mental telepathy they've developed over 10 years in almost constant company. One music magazine recently likened them to Morecombe and Wise, in their pyjamas and propped up next to each other in bed. What they do voice however, is concern over how Come With Us has been greeted by some of the press. There have been some decidedly sniffy reviews, some claiming that the band are out of touch with the latest trends in clubland (which, as working DJs, they hotly deny) or that Come With Us is trading off the glories of their past.

"Some of the comments have been a bit infuriating. Some of the things that have been written betray ignorance of what we set out to do – they just say that we don't like doing interviews or saying what we do in the studio. But I do think some of the tracks have got a raw deal.

"Reading things like 'this track could have been on any one of the Chemical Brothers' albums' is a particular bugbear," grumbles Simons. "We don't reject things in the studio, we're excited by what we've done, and then also if we hear something that reminds us of it. "Galaxy Bounce" has got a particular amount of stick..." "...for just sounding like the Chemical Brothers," finishes Rowlands with a snort.

"Then there's this continual comment that we ignore the trends of the day like electropop or twostep," continues Simons. "We might be excited by those things in a club, but we never sit down in the studio and go, 'let's make a record like that'."

Simons is aggrieved that the duo's music can be dismissed so easily. "We don't just whack stuff out like some people do. Our records take a lot of time. They don't sound laboured, but to get what we like about music into it takes time. It has to have a thrill to it and sound exciting and instant, like club music is when it first hits a wave of people. And it also has to have other stuff so that you can listen to it for a long time. It takes a lot of exploring for us to do it. But it would be nice to make a record that didn't take quite so long to make. They all seem to take us about a year and half to make."

Come With Us might not have the genre defining moments that Dig Your Own Hole or Surrender had, like the Noel Gallagher-graced "Setting Sons" or "Hey Boy Hey Girl", but it's not the lazy effort that it's been painted either. There are just two tracks with live vocals – Orton's "The State We're In" and the epic closer "The Test" with Richard Ashcroft.

The latter collaboration had interesting beginnings. Despite the pair being massive Verve fans, they'd met Ashcroft only once – when he stopped them from DJing at a party. As Rowlands mischievously lets slip, Ashcroft tells a different version these days: "He was talking about it the other day, saying Liam Gallagher at the party was shouting 'right, fucking getting off', and Richard was [cue posh accent] 'Actually, if you listen Liam, you might find you're wrong'. But says that he couldn't stop Liam from getting us kicked off." There are no hard feelings, though and the pair claim Ashcroft's voice was the only one that could do justice to the sprawling, spacey beats of the track.

And Beth Orton? "Beth wasn't on the last record but we've done great stuff with her and decided we should do it again. Her voice sounds wicked with our music, it fits really well. When Richard came in we had to get to know him and settle down. When Beth comes in she's our friend and we can just gossip." A chat over a nice cup of tea? Very homely.

"Not a cup of tea but the entire menu at Nando's actually," Rowlands says. Simons nods. "From the chicken livers up. An amazing appetite for such a waif-like figure. We also played an awful lot of Gran Turismo."

"Basically she's just your average teenager," quips Rowlands, "eating fried chicken and playing Grand Theft Auto." The homely, refined Beth Orton image is now forever stained with chicken grease. Incidentally, Rowlands and Simons have produced a track for Orton's forthcoming album.

Rowlands and Simons are now working out what to put into the Come With Us live shows, which hit Japan and Australasia before reaching the UK in mid-March. It's not just the fitting-new-tracks-with-old dilemma every band faces at these times, it's the fact that every song has alternative melodies, beats, sounds and rhythms added to it that might not make it on to the recorded version but which could be used live. Added to that, Rowlands has found a cherished old keyboard that sports several mangled keys from previous live shows. He's desperate to get it working again.

First off though, it's a DJ set at London's Heaven tonight, the Chems' first live set in the UK since New Year's Eve, in a post 11 September clubland that is cold and gloomy and suffering poor attendances. "It's been a long month. Everyone's skint. Everyone's depressed. The weather's crap," agrees Rowlands.

"But I get the sense that it's going to be a lot of people's first night out. First of February. The start to the year."

The Chemical Brothers' 'Come With Us' is out now on Virgin Records. Their UK tour begins on 18 March at Birmingham Academy (0121-262 3000)