Dig Your Own Hole

In 1997, electronica duo The Chemical Brothers released their second album, Dig Your Own Hole. It went on to be an extremely popular example of “big beat” music, and is included in numerous “Best Albums of All-Time” lists. I had a copy of the CD in my old car for so long the case turned into shardy shit.

I used to have one of those car CD players where you removed the front panel to keep the stereo from getting stolen. I would drive from my job at Media Play, wearing my work uniform (blue button-down shirt and khaki pants), to Kinko’s Copies, so I could make copies of Mike The Pod Comix #4. To impress girls, I would casually plop the face of my car stereo onto the counter. I’m kidding, of course. It was Kinko’s, there were no girls there.

I’ve listened to Dig Your Own Hole so many times, for so long, that I can honestly tell you which songs suck. There are three; everything else is solid gold. (Caveats to follow.)

Right off the bat: skip track 1. “Block Rockin’ Beats” sucks. The vocals suck, the video sucks, and it played on MTV so often, all joy was drained from it, just like “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys. Skip it.

Start with the title track, you’ll be fine.

https://youtu.be/9dajDg63iEw

That’s a warm-up for the third track, “Elektrobank”. My only quibble is the distorted voice in the intro (I think it’s actually Kool Herc); I can’t understand most of it. But the bulk of this track is indomitable. Once that sample vocal starts up, you can’t keep your hands and feet still. And this is from the mid-90s, when people thought Jock Jams was a reasonable purchase.

A throbbing segue leads into the fourth cut, “Piku”, which keeps that mirrored ball up high in the atmosphere.

https://youtu.be/s7ZoVCuQcD8

These are all samples, folks. You couldn’t just walk into a Best Buy and buy the software to do this, either. You had to know what the fuck you wanted to do, and how to do it. In 1996.

The fifth track, “Setting Sun”, is a piece of shit. Skip it. I don’t know what makes it worse; Noel Gallagher’s typically awful singing, or the fucking horrific fire-alarm Beatles sample. There are still people who claim Oasis was an actual band, with songs worth listening to. Oasis sucks. Nothing they have ever done is any good whatsoever. Noel Gallagher is the male Natalie Merchant, only slightly more fuckable. I mean that. Goats in estrus sing better.

“It Doesn’t Matter”, the sixth track, is my favorite. It’s a great mantra for when your life is overwhelmed with other people’s bullshit. The sample comes from Lothar and the Hand People, a late-60s psychedelic band. They called themselves the Hand People because they played theremin (named “Lothar”) and Moog. I always think of the Mike Myers sketch from Saturday Night Live, “Lothar of the Hill People”, where they joked about “walking with a woman”.

This is the finest track on the album. Too many woofers to count were blown playing this. Many, many trips to Radio Shack were made.

https://youtu.be/jvOge07GcO4

The bleeping outro fades into the beat of the next track, “Don’t Stop The Rock”. This is the pinch-hitter of the album; when you least expect it, this one razes the dance floor like a tornado. Everything is consumed in a spinning, whirling funnel of glorious noise.

https://youtu.be/lfcvuMxRnQA

Just layers upon layers of percussion. That one gets me every time.

A minor quibble- a sample begins towards the end that nearly sinks the subsequent song. It sounds like a dork saying “get up on it” and “I’m a little ____, but thanks anyway”. In track 8, he starts going “yes yes y’all”, and… it’s kind of on the cringeworthy side. Still, a solid number, once it gets off the ground.

https://youtu.be/ySFSO8Nl6x0

“Lost In The K-Hole” is the ninth cut, referencing the somnambulist state brought on by ketamine and similar drugs. I used to listen to it on ecstasy, way back when. The song leads you through endless tunnels and alleyways, with a great bassline. Remember rave, before club kids destroyed it? This was its doorway.

I guess we were having too much fun, because a wet blanket in the form of Beth Orton shows up for track 10. Skip “Where Do I Begin”. It sucks. It drags the end of the album down like a boulder. You know, Portishead was okay and all, but goddamn, did every dance record have to feature a morose woman singing pensively about life lessons? Again I’m reminded of old Saturday Night Live, and its schizoid scheduling, wherein raucous comedy would be screechingly halted by George Carlin softly whispering “ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Janis Ian.” Janis Ian learned the truth at seventeen! You can’t just toss her into a Marx Brothers pie fight!

You’re better off closing out the album with its last track, “The Private Psychedelic Reel”. Maybe its because the disc was released in 1997, but I find this song inseparable from the Will Smith movie Men In Black. It has that same feel, and at the time this was on Media Play’s P.A., we actually stocked the MiB toy weapons set. It came with the Cricket, the flashy-thing, and the bigger gun. I am stupider than shit for not buying it. I never saw that set again. I can’t even find it on the Internet.

https://youtu.be/tdT7GEhpM9A

I am convinced that Dig Your Own Hole is a better album with the excisions I have noted. I don’t think the previous effort, Exit Planet Dust, is half the record this one is (though it is good). It sounds as hard and as fine as it did almost twenty years ago, when the Chemical Brothers wrote the book on big beat.