Chemical Brothers Will 'Rise Again' After Concert Film With London Olympics Song

How was your memory of the performance different from the film?

When we play, particularly big shows that feel special, I always think, "I really want to remember how it felt to be looking at this audience and be making the music." And I never really remember. I've got a good memory, but you can never really retain that feeling, so I've watched myself doing it. I can't really tie up what it's like being on stage. I mean, I look like I'm enjoying myself. There's some posture problems I think I've got. I think I need to stop leaning over so much. No, it's good. It's an odd feeling, a bit like hearing your voice on an answering machine -- that kind of slight cringe, you know?

Right. Does that change the way the way you think about your set, or the way you'll perform in the future?

Well, I'm gonna improve my posture [laughs]. It's quite a while before we'll be playing live again, but I think it's probably set the bar quite high, for how we present ourselves in the future. We've created this huge, big show, and I think if we're to play, people want to see that. Or maybe we'll have to scale right back and just be us and instruments. I don't know. One of the main, great things about this film is it feels like the culmination of a lot of touring and a lot of playing. I think we captured a really good performance, so we have to think about that for a while now. [Performing live] is kind of done, for the moment, but we will rise again. How has your experience performing around world changed, since, say '97, in electronic music's heyday?

We had a much more rudimentary show, and it was probably much more fierce. It was very, very intense. The visuals were black and white and really in your face. The audience was pretty similar, really. When we first started in America, we played in Orlando to raver kids -- you know, the backpacks and the dummies [pacifiers] and nappies, or whatever it was. That went pretty quick. Probably for the best. The main stage we've played in America was Coachella, which was a beautiful crowd. People were into it. One of the main differences is we didn't get to play so much in Europe, maybe, because of the economy -- Southern Europe -- and that used to be good. Spain has got a real good carnival atmosphere that suited our music. I don't know. It's hard, really, to say the differences. When you're onstage, it's a sea of people enjoying themselves. That's universal.

How about America's change of heart regarding dance music, and how it's become so mainstream, 15 years later?

Whilst we've enjoyed some commercial success, our music isn't really like the dance music that is known for being successful. It doesn't sound like commercial dance music typically. It's pretty out there, psychedelic. It has has this sense that it makes sense. I wish him all the best, but our music is very far removed from, say, David Guetta's music.

Right. It's funny to see that become commercial music.

Yeah. Hmm. What are you gonna do?

How did you wind up doing the score for the 2011 film 'Hanna?' Do you plan on scoring more films?

We would love to. Over the years, we've had a few offers, but we're always very much into making Chemical Brothers albums and going on tour. ['Hanna' director] Joe Wright is a very old friend of ours. He gave us the script, and we just thought it'd be really cool to do something completely different, to sit down and do a whole score. It was very liberating to make music that had another purpose, because we had the picture as well, which sort of completes the music, in a way, and allowed us to be quite experimental in the studio. It's challenging work, so it was good that we were with Joe, and he was a friend, and he was patient with us, because it was learning as we went, really. We'd definitely like to do it again, but it was very fortuitous that we liked the script. What was good for us about Hanna was that it had a sort of propulsion. She's kind of moving through a journey, so it's quite propulsive, and the European setting, there's a darkness and then there's light, and all these kind of things we're interested in, in our music, so it was a very good fit for us. I hope something like that will come again. I don't think we'll just want to do soundtracks just for the sake of doing soundtracks. It has to be something that really fits for us. Like Daft Punk 'Electroma' was such an incredible fit.

Because 'Don't Think' is almost out, we're interested to know what you guys are planning for the future.

Well, we're doing a bit of DJing this year. I would like to go to America and DJ at one of these new big raves. No one's asked us yet, but maybe you can put that out there. We're DJing in London in a couple of weeks, and we're going to Japan. We're working on some new music. We're doing some music for the Olympics, which is happening in our fair of town of London, and we've been asked to do something for that. And yeah, someday, there'll be another Chemical Brothers record.