Yes, but where?
[Video][Website]
[4.90]
Patrick St. Michel: This sounds exactly what a Chemical Brothers and Q-Tip collaboration would have sounded like in the late ’90s, when this might have been charming. Alas, in 2015 this sounds like a very corny mash-up.
[3]
Alfred Soto: An idea whose time had come in 1998. Nothing wrong with the bass and Latin percussion, and Q-Tip’s syncopation is as natural as the Bros’ penchant for vulgar noises.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: Q-Tip does his inane “Vivrant Thing” nonsense remaining eternally unfunky, while The Chems play their best 8 years too late electro-house. Sure to be a hit with advertising firms who love nothing more than good old sell-out fluff.
[3]
Thomas Inskeep: I doubt this’ll make it into a Budweiser commercial.
[6]
Iain Mew: It’s a rickety assemblage of a bunch of half-finished old ideas, but it did already make it to Match of the Day 2‘s end of season montage, so it’s a full success on some level.
[3]
Mo Kim: Flash Flash Revolution is an online version of Dance Dance Revolution, where players hit arrows in time to music. The game relies heavily on free-source content (although its organizers have snagged an impressively long list of fair-use permits over the last decade), and since it’s played on the keyboard instead of a dancepad, it tends to be extremely fast-paced and high-energy. I’ve played since I was seven, but I haven’t touched it in a while; even so, I imagine “Go” would play quite well. It has a great build-up of tension over its three minute run, an endearingly corny rapping section (this is the most important thing) and a super-catchy reprise with a bit of a baroque flavor. It reminds me of spending lazy June afternoons after summer school on a rickety Windows XP computer, waiting for the next song to load.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Pure corn, just genetically modified futurecorn, by artists whom everyone involved somehow forgot stopped being edgy 15 years ago. That’s one of my favorite genres.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Maybe Q couldn’t have been the link between hip-hop and EDM; ATCQ hunkered into jazz-rap so well it looked like entrenchment. He did his thing in the interim; now he’s here with the Chems, who’ve put some hype house into their big beat. He sounds like a man half his age, twitchy and eager to get the party over. The bass has his back. But the brothers still let in their controlled chaos — sour hits and a klaxon’s sense of hookiness. Which means that he’s stuck as the earworm, and the thirty-second bass notes disappear when it counts.
[5]
Ramzi Awn: I always had a thing for the Chemical Brothers. I don’t know if it was just the name, the time, or the fact that my older cousin and his friends listened to them, but we had a time. “Go” is pretty straightforward: an ode to opulence. It may not be as effective as a “Take Me Back To Your House” by Basement Jaxx or “Like a G6,” but the riffs are pretty good, and the production is dated enough to satisfy.
[6]
Ashley Ellerson: I highly doubt this will be a strong commercial success or a Grammy winner, but it’s nice to hear the duo and Q-Tip reuniting ten years later with something new. Both “Galvanize” and “Go” want listeners to take action in some form (the titles are interchangeable to a degree, and I’m thinking this was intentional), but the latter lacks the same level of motivation and push that the former incited in all of our bones in 2005. Then the guys enlisted Michel Gondry (director of my favorite film) to make a surprisingly lackluster video, resulting in an overall subpar package from all parties involved. “We’re only here to make you go,” Q-Tip reminds us, and now it’s time to go listen to every other Chem Bros single and think of this as a minor setback in their 20+ year career.
[6]