Right from ‘Exit Planet Dust’, The Chemical Brothers have a close relationship with Tim Burgess, whose guest vocal on ‘Leave Home’ helped propel their debut album to even higher levels than even their large talent did. This tune, the second track on ‘Push The Button’, is a belter – a choppy piano riff arrives, backed with diverse percussion and messed up and re-arranged as we’d expect. Burgess is as flanged as he was on ‘Forever’ by his day job band The Charlatans, although this is much more of a party tune. Strange bleepy noises fight with each other for prominence over beautiful flange drops and Burgess reminding us that he ‘can’t seem to shake this feeling.’
DFA have of course made a big name for themselves producing the likes of The Rapture and remixing Radio 4, and here, The Boxer gets their treatment – turning a driven and jovial dance tune into a long and unruffled exercise in urban backing music. Nothing really much challenges on this track; neither are we much surprised the b-side ‘Swiper’ – but The Boxer itself is great. It begs the question though, why would you buy this, when you could get the album for around three times the four pound cost?
