On another, though, characterising ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ as a big beat record today seems absurd. If you remove the hulking behemoth of ‘Setting Sun’ from its middle (which, of course, you can’t – but more on that shortly), the album is suddenly recontextualised as three suites of ecstatic electronica, full of abstract glorious noise, nagging repetitions and polyrhythms and, crucially, a level of stylistic depth that separates it from merry pranksters such as Fatboy Slim and Bentley Rhythm Ace entirely.
That’s not to say, though, that even without Noel Gallagher’s presence, ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ would be a record for purists. Indeed, from the album’s opening combination of samples – bassline from jazz fusion, drums from funk, vocals from hip-hop – to the dizzying climax of ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ with its sitar drones and clarinet improvisations, it’s clear that Rowlands and Simons are more magpies than pure musicians, drawn less to the introspective, technical cleanliness of techno’s thud and more to the shimmering breadth of its influences.
In fact, it’s far easier to see ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ as a peculiarly British answer to DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’, revelling in crate-digger inspiration and the serendipitous joy at smooshing two unrelated obscurities together in counterpoint. As such, when wakka-wakka guitars enter the fray on the title track, picking up the Stone Roses’ Madchester legacy and doubling the pace, and then a trace of samba is introduced to round off the end of the album’s second part, that sense of boundless musical exploration remains quite infectious.
Of course, an upbeat turntablist’s dream isn’t exactly the record that the Chemical Brothers released twenty years ago today, as between the first and second sections of ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ sits the not-insignificant matter of ‘Setting Sun’, the album’s majestic centrepiece, its lead single, one of the most uncompromisingly enormous songs ever to top the UK singles chart – and also the album’s sore thumb.
In isolation, age has not withered ‘Setting Sun’. Twenty years on, its atonal squeals, monstrous bass throbs and grinding breakdowns are still brilliantly eye-popping. Its bludgeoning throbs and intimidating percussion loops, as aggressively in your face as any jump-up drum’n’bass figure before or since, remain utterly unforgiving. Even Noel Gallagher – not even the best vocalist in his family – manages to conjure a snarl as menacingly bored as any classic punk single.
The song seemed to offer hope, too: at the time, sections of the Oasisphere wrote to the letters page of Select explaining how ‘Setting Sun’ was indicative of Noel Gallagher’s new direction, how the third Oasis album would be a wild, electronic updating of the Beatles’ most beguiling experiments. In hindsight, perhaps what’s saddest about that particular memory is that those things still seemed just about possible – even now, it’s easy to imagine a world in which ‘Setting Sun’ was released as a one-off Oasis single and its success, coupled with the name on the sleeve, prompted Noel to make ‘Be Here Now’ with piles of ecstasy rather than cocaine. In reality, ‘Setting Sun’ is probably the last great Noel Gallagher single (but we can save that argument until August).
