The Jukebox gets SUPER TIMELY with OLYMPIC FRIDAY! And look who’s back for the occasion…
[Video][Website]
[6.22]
Iain Mew: The Chemical Brothers take on their Olympic commission in straightforward fashion. Small dalliances with epic strings aside, it’s a piece of pulsing up-tempo dance music with a robotic voice intoning the name of the venue, just in case you forget where you are. It gives some sense of speed, technology and excitement and lets in a sense of humour too. As far as utilitarian soundtrack music goes, it’s pretty good.
[7]
Pete Baran: I haven’t checked if other official Olympic venues have their own theme; I’d love to hear the New Young Pony Club’s theme for Horse Guards Parade. But for all its Chemical Brothers box ticking, Velodrome is a hell of a funny three minutes of cycling music. From noticing that “Velodrome” has the same number of syllables as “Autobahn,” to the ratchet and squeaky tyre noises it slips in, “Theme For Velodrome” manages to be the Chemical Brothers track with the most personality in ages. Which to be fair still isn’t much personality, but I’d ride a Boris Bike to it.
[7]
Alfred Soto: The squelches, whistles, and screeches would have been the start of a decent Chem Bros track in 1999.
[3]
Kat Stevens: During this year’s Tour de France I kept flicking back to the Youtube link for Pete Shelley’s “Give It To Me“, a version of which was used for the old Channel 4 coverage when I was a kid. Powerful and relentless but mournful and exhilirating, winding round and round the Alps for days and days, focused on a single goal — the only sign of weakness being Shelley’s flappy vocal. I think this is the real inspiration behind “Velodrome”‘s metronomic spindly spokes. Don’t tell Kraftwerk.
[9]
Anthony Easton: Makes me think of Kraftwerk, of course — and someone smarter than I could point out why that sounded expansive, and this sounds hermetic, comparing the external of the Tour d’France with the internal of the velodrome itself. Oddly, it has a kind of friendly paranoia, like the two mascots of the games themselves. But the thing that I love most about this track is that it could have a theme for all sorts of events: theme for 400m butterfly, theme for modern pentathlon, theme for water polo, theme for rhythmic gymnastics (well, that has music, and I am not sure that it could be better then the version of “Live and Let Die” already played). These must be more exciting than that.
[4]
Will Adams: It bleeps and blorts as garishly as an early racing video game, so it’s fitting that it was inspired by the Velodrome track. The bassline pumps like a cyclist in the last lap, and the orchestral bits divebomb in to add gravitas then soar away. Can more Olympics-themed songs be like this?
[7]
Michaela Drapes: Oh, seriously, now — was the processed robovoice necessary in the first minute? I get it, guys. This is the Theme for the VELODROME. But outside of that, this invokes a sort of Eurotrash Tron pedal power feeling, which I guess was the point? Something tells me this will end up on the soundtrack for every Soulcycle spinning class for the next few months, at least, so there’s that going for it!
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: It’s hilarious that the Chemical Brothers get an Olympic tie-in, considering that avoiding mentioning the Bros. in dance-music revival articles could be a sport in the music-critic Olympics. (Also included: puns; not included: sports.) It sounds like the orchestral-harpsichordal victory music you’d play for the winning nation — Germany, Dancelandia, whatever — of some new fourth-tier medal made of molten Speak-n-Spells, or perhaps like a college freshman’s repetitive, grunty imagined soundtrack to a love scene. It’s already gotten one YouTuber to write “‘song’? Can you sing it?,” with his nose probably up a tuba. Driving while it plays would probably be really fun. What more could I want?
[7]
Brad Shoup: “Hammering hard over the final kilometer on his way to the first silver medal in his country’s proud history, it’s the rider from Italo-Disco!”
[6]