Surrender

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons released Surrender on their own Freestyle Dust imprint, through Virgin, on 21 June 1999 in Britain. Japan had it on 7 June. The British CD is XDUSTCD4. Before that name on the sleeve, they had DJ’d as the Dust Brothers, residents at the Heavenly Sunday Social, until the American producers who already used the name objected. The Social was a club night with a function room and a reputation. The album is what that duo did once the records had got too large for the function room and they still could not sing.

The Independent introduced the guest list in one dry line. The brothers can’t sing, so other people help. Noel Gallagher sings Let Forever Be. Bernard Sumner sings and plays guitar on Out of Control, with Bobby Gillespie on extra vocals. Hope Sandoval sings Asleep from Day. Jonathan Donahue sings, and plays guitar and piano, on Dream On. Out of Control is the house track. The breakbeat habit is still all over the rest. The singers are the new fact. Big beat had got by on a sample where a chorus ought to be. Here the chorus is a person from New Order, or from Mazzy Star, or from Oasis, booked for one song and sent home.

Hey Boy Hey Girl came out on 26 May 1999 and reached number 3 in Britain. The writing credit on that track includes Gregory Wigfall, Richard Fowler, Charles Pettiford, Celite Evans and Jerry Bloodrock, which is the paper trail of a sample, not a guest turning up to the studio. Under the Influence had already been in the shops on vinyl, in June 1998, as Electronic Battle Weapon 3, a record made for DJs and kept off the chart on purpose. That is their real publishing schedule. A tool for the booth, then a single, then an album that lets a singer stand where the sample used to stand.

Let Forever Be reached number 9. Out of Control reached number 21. Music: Response, issued in March 2000 with five songs on it, was not eligible for the British chart, which then wanted three. They were still a dance act counting formats, after Oasis had sung on a track and Glastonbury was on the calendar. The Independent listed the summer for them: Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, Homelands. The festivals were the scale. The Battle Weapon was the job.

The sleeve is a club photograph. Kate Gibb, a London screen-printer, made the artwork from pictures in the Hulton Picture Library. The cover treats Richard Young’s photograph Jesus Amongst the Fans, taken at the Great British Music Festival at Kensington Olympia in 1976. The dancer is William Jellett, who called himself Jesus and spent decades at British shows handing strangers dried fruit and nuts. Ed Simons told Q that the picture matched one of their gigs in the American Midwest: everyone else sat down, and one person was actually in the room. Q reported that in February 1999 the duo had about two weeks to finish a cover, a live show and a run of promotion in Japan. Another Gibb image, later used on the Out of Control single, had been considered for the album. Surrender was their second number-one album. The BPI certified it double platinum on 30 September 2005. A tour edition in Australia and New Zealand added a second disc of B-sides. It is also the first Chemical Brothers album without Beth Orton. She returns on the next one, Come with Us, on The State We’re In. The guests here are booked for a track. The singer who had been nearest to a member of the group is missing, and the credit list shows it.

Surrender is the moment that club duo admitted a song might need a person with a tune, and then refused to become a band with a frontman. They hired the frontmen for a track each and kept the machines. The Social is still audible in the method, which is: make the tool, test it on dancers, put a voice on it only when the voice is someone else’s. The singers are the evidence that the method had hit a wall they were willing to name in the credits.

Sources

• Surrender: Japan 7 June 1999, Britain 21 June 1999, Freestyle Dust XDUSTCD4, the guests, Hey Boy Hey Girl, Electronic Battle Weapon 3, the single peaks.
• The Chemical Brothers: the Dust Brothers name, and the residency at the Heavenly Sunday Social.
• The Independent: the guest list, the note that Rowlands and Simons can’t sing, and the 1999 festival dates.
• NME: Surrender on 21 June through Freestyle Dust, and the Gallagher, Sumner and Mercury Rev credits.