The Dust Brothers (original)

The Dust Brothers are a music production duo consisting of Michael Simpson and John King. Known for their heavily sample-based sound, they're most famous for producing The Beastie Boys' sophomore album Paul's Boutique, Beck's Odelay, and the score to the film Fight Club. They also did "MMMBop", but no one talks about that.

History with The Chems
Tom and Ed first took the name The Dust Brothers in 1992 as a homage to the Dust Brothers and their work on Pauls Boutique, thinking they would never be famous enough for the name to cause problems. Their first ever release, and the first under this name, was their remix of Ariel's T-Baby. They would go on to release Song To The Siren, two EPs, and a plethora of remixes under this name.

As the time for recording their first album approached, The Dust Brothers threatened to sue Tom and Ed over the borrowing of their name. Disheartened, Tom and Ed settled on the name Chemical Brothers, named after the track Chemical Beats and continued on. This change in name was referenced in the title of their album Exit Planet Dust.

Eventually problems between the two duos were resolved when The Dust Brothers provided their own mix of Elektrobank in 1997. The Chemical Brothers returned the favor in 1998 with a mix of the unreleased Dust Brothers composition Realize.

Connections

 * The Dust Brothers remixed Elektrobank, which appeared on the Elektrobank single.
 * The Chemical Brothers remixed their track Realize, which only appeared on the soundtrack to Dead Man On Campus, a 1998 film. Strangely, the original mix of Realize has never been released.

Quotations

 * "In the early stages of your career the Dust Brothers threatened to sue if you didn't change your name. Now they've remixed one of your tracks..."  - NY Rock


 * "Yeah, that was some shock. We loved them, admired them. That's why we called ourselves Dust Brothers and when they threatened to sue we were shattered." - Tom


 * "Yes, but now that they remixed one of our tracks and we remixed one of their tracks everything is fine. It's a great compliment, after all they were our heroes and our inspiration." - Ed