CONSIGNING the celebrity vocalists to the dustbin seems to be the modus operandi for dance music at the moment.

UNKLE have gone down that route and so too have one of the hardiest perennials of the genre, the Chemicals, for their seventh album.

If Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are aiming to show they’ve been around this game long enough to do without the likes of Noel Gallagher and Beth Orton grabbing their coat-tails, the irritating, jammed-fax-machine opening of Snow bodes incredibly badly.

But it’s the falsest of dawns, because Further is perhaps the smoothest and most cohesive album the Chemicals have ever made.

Utterly devoid of attitude, ego or compromise, it blends the racing Escape Velocity, the growl and gleam of Dissolve, the Krautrock of Horse Power and the Eighties-tinged house of Swoon in the style of a band whose hand has never been surer.

Backed up, on the deluxe edition, with a bonus CD of visuals from their recent residency at London’s Roundhouse, Further is proof there’s no substitute for class.