revolver and the chems

i remember years ago when emi and i were talking about the beatles, and he mentioned the tape loop experimentation that they used to create revolver. a raver at the time, and i guess a raver lacking in a real music education, i was floored by the discovery that loops and sampling were nothing new.

it still blows my mind. the mythical recording "the void," a product of paul mccartney's tape experiments, became the incredible "tomorrow never knows," which is really the height of revolver. the chemical brothers, beatles fans that they are, reinterpreted "tomorrow never knows" and created "setting sun," a blistering song on their second album, dig your own hole. "setting sun" brings the vibrating bass line into the foreground and makes the drums much more explosive. but somehow, the song retains the swirling psychedelic tone of "tomorrow never knows," a dizzy, wonderful sensation.

in the july 2006 issue of MOJO, tom rowlands of the chems talks about playing "tomorrow never knows" during dj sets, and having people "ask if it was something new, or a remix - it just sounded so intense and wild." he also talks about searching for a copy of "the void" and never being able to find it.

it's hard for me to imagine a time when a loop was just that - a piece of a sound recording on tape, cut and spliced together end to end to create a continuous loop. for me, a loop has always been digital, a few seconds of a beat cut and pasted endlessly and layered with other sounds, something to move your feet to on a packed dancefloor. there's a great article in the aforementioned MOJO about paul, the one who pioneered the band's tape experimentation, heading over to the studio with a plastic shopping bag full of tape