Right from the opening, you know this is going to be a great record. We start with a single note, gradually fading into earshot, riding a simple rhythm like a train going at speed. It's the sort of introduction that has always brought up great tunes.
And this note goes on, adding arpeggios and a polite bass rhythm. Onwards, faster, higher, stronger, better.
37 seconds, in comes a hummable bit, carrying the main tune in six bars of aural perfection. The original note finally dies after 53 seconds, but the tune is well established by now.
Onwards, faster, higher, stronger, more welcoming. Like a sunny day with the world rushing past at a hundred miles an hour.
Like in the video, filmed on trains in southern France with the world rushing past at a hundred miles an hour.
There are fizzes, there are crackles, but there's nothing to break the serenity of the track.
Almost 100 seconds in, a barely-audible choir begins to recite a couplet over and over again. From then on, it's a continuation of the themes that have been heard, but recombined in novel ways.
And then it's over. We've arrived, and the track comes to a graceful conclusion.
Frantic in parts, but never anything less than sublimely relaxing, this is a track that is perhaps too short for the single format. Four minutes is not long enough to do the ideas justice. It could be the basis for something similar to Michael Nyman's 1994 composition Music á Grande Vitesse
, a 25 minute journey on the TGV that covers broadly similar ground.
The Chemical Brothers' album is Dig Your Own Hole
, out now.