Before Arcade Fire released their latest album Neon Bible, band leader Win Butler gauged fan reaction to potential tracks by first posting them on MySpace under the guise of spoof groups. It’s a trick Chemical Bros Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands repeated in the run-up to the launch of We Are The Night, the duo’s sixth long-player. Instead of MySpace, though, numbers were anonymously road-tested at club nights, as Daft Punk might put it, all around the world.

You might well have heard some of these tracks before then. And that’s the case even if your clubbing days are behind you. For The Chemical Brothers reference their early BPM-fixated sound as well as some of their favourite bands including New Order and The Verve.

Best listened to in daylight hours whilst blindfolded, We Are The Night was “recorded under cover of darkness in a bombproof bunker in south London”. The “new” material certainly went down a storm at Glastonbury’s Other Stage recently. Selected by the Eavises to close Sunday night, the NME review talked of fans battling against the mud to witness “a rousing finale”.

As always with Simons and Rowlands, it’s not all about them. Their guests, as ever, bring something interesting to the table. Most intriguing of all are The Klaxons who were persuaded not to sing, as Simons recalled in an interview with The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis, “‘Arnold Layne’ by Pink Floyd over the top of the music we’d done”, but still nevertheless shock and delight in equal measure on the super-loopy ‘All Rights Reversed’.

It’s a bold claim The Chemical Brothers make. Yet their music has provided a soundtrack for many an evening’s pleasure. And, on this evidence, will continue to do so for some time.

(4½/5)