30 Years Later, Chemical Brothers’ Exit Planet Dust Still Sounds Like It Came From the Future

Some albums get old.

Others do not want to get old.

Thirty years after it came out Exit Planet Dust still has the energy that made dance floors feel scary in the mid 1990s. It is loud. It is messy. It is psychedelic. It is a wild really.. That is exactly why it still matters.

When Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons showed the world their album in June 1995 electronic music was at a cool point. Club culture was getting big. Full length dance albums that were good from start to finish were not common. Of doing what was popular they mixed breakbeats, acid house, rock style, hip hop samples and warehouse rave culture into something that did not fit into one type of music. It was not polished. It was not trying to be perfect.

It just worked.

Songs like "Leave Home " "Chemical Beats," "Life Is Sweet " and "Song to the Siren" did not just fill dance floors. They helped define what big beat music would become over the few years. The album made the line between club music and popular music blurry without losing its edge, a balance that many electronic artists have tried to do since then.

Listening to it today is an experience. The music has a sound but it does not feel old. If anything many modern electronic records owe more to Exit Planet Dust than people probably think. You can hear bits of it everywhere... In festival stages warehouse parties, indie electronic music even in producers who may have never meant to copy it.

It is funny how influence works.

The album also marked the start of what would become one of musics most consistent careers. Over the years The Chemical Brothers have changed their sound times while still being themselves. That is rare. Really rare.

Maybe that is the biggest thing they did.

Not that the record sold a lot of copies. Not that critics liked it. Not even that it helped electronic music become popular. Those things are important. Many successful albums eventually become old news.

This one did not.

People still play it because it still feels new.

Three decades later Exit Planet Dust is more, than a first album. It is a picture of a moment when electronic music stopped waiting for permission and started taking over. The beats are still big. The attitude is still there.. Somehow against all odds the record still sounds like it is coming from the future instead of the past.

That is not being nostalgic.

That is timelessness.