20th Anniversary Edition Of The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Surrender’ Out Now

The 20th anniversary editions of The Chemical Brothers classic 1999 album, Surrender, are out now on Astralwerks/Capitol/UMe. These new fully expanded versions bring together the original album with previously unreleased ‘Secret Psychedelic Mixes’ and a selection of B-sides and remixes curated by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons of  The Chemical Brothers over four 180-g vinyl LPs or three CDs – each with a DVD, book and four art prints. The deluxe is also available digitally for streaming and download. A 2CD version expands the original album with a selection of b-sides and remixes from the period.

Also available now, exclusively at independent record stores around the globe, is an extremely limited vinyl pressing of the “Secret Psychedelic Mix” of Out Of Control,’ which has been pressed as a limited one-sided white label record. This track is part of a suite of remixes Rowlands and Simons prepared back in 1999 to complement Surrender. Unreleased at the time, they were recently unearthed when archive work began on the expanded 20^th anniversary boxed set editions. Of the five ‘Secret Psychedelic Mixes’ on the new set, the aptly titled ‘Out Of Control (21 Minutes Of Madness)’ takes the Surrender classic and transports the listener to all kinds of interesting places.

By the time Surrender arrived in shops in the summer of 1999, The Chemical Brothers had already created their own mythology. The single that preceded it – ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’ – was built around a fiercely addictive mantra that was both a gutsy calling card for the record’s creators and readymade chant for the legions of hedonists consumed by a club scene that had finally gone global.

Surrender, though, offered the listener so much more than soundbites. It was truly the moment that everything around The Chemical Brothers went full color, whether through Kate Gibb’s hallucinatory art-work or the wild and propulsive psychedelia of tracks like album centerpiece ‘The Sunshine Underground.’ Elsewhere, singular talents Bernard Sumner, Hope Sandoval, Jonathan Donahue and Noel Gallagher were filtered into the band’s sound, less like guest vocalists and more like moving parts of a bigger machine designed to make the listener… well…surrender.

Surrender went on to win Album of the Year at the 1999 Q Awards, and The Chemical Brothers won Best Dance Act at the 2000 Brit Awards. One year on from release, they headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival, playing to the biggest crowd the festival had ever seen (this was prior to the fence going up when the festival had a massively exploded capacity).

The first Chemical Brothers album to receive the deluxe album treatment, the 20th anniversary deluxe edition of Surrender enhances the original eleven track album with two additional discs of rare and unreleased music and a DVD of remastered promos and footage filmed for the BBC live at Glastonbury Festival 2000 that hasn’t been seen since original broadcast. It also comes with a set of exclusive Kate Gibb prints of original sleeve artwork and a color book featuring testimonials from key collaborators and guest musicians as well as new liner notes from Jon Savage, the band’s longtime visual collaborator, Adam Smith, and Alexis Petridis, who describes Surrender as “a snapshot of a moment in time that could’ve been released yesterday.”

Surrender is out now and can be bought here.

Format: UK English