Chemical Brothers - Dig CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

Do I Begin," with British rave-crowd chanteuse Beth Orton, sounds like Jane Birkin-does-"Ummagumma"), they don't need words or voices to get their basic message across. Which is: Shut up, trance out, dance your ass off.

Prodigy get by nicely on ferocity alone; "Fat of the Land" hasn't sold 1.3 million copies in the U.S. because of its textural depth or stimulating lyrics (it has little of either). If it weren't for the distinctively plastic sound of the drum programs and the gulping-synth noises that pass for melody, "Fat" would barely qualify as electronica. Producer, writer and chief button pusher Liam Howlett shaves his songs and samples down to a chain-saw-guitar buzz that has "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" stamped all over it. But Howlett's riffs go nowhere after initial impact, and google-eyed stage demon Keith F

This powerful second outing sees Tom and Ed going large with "Block Rockin' Beats," "Setting Sun" and the magnificent "The Private Psychedelic Reel," This is a big loud album for big loud clubs and it marks the point where they really took off. Oasis's Noel Gallagher's vocals bridge the rock/electronica divide, as do the use of (shock) "real" instrumentation throughout.