That’s brotherly chemistry

OVER the course of 15 block-rocking years together as big beat electronica’s most celebrated duo, the Chemical Brothers, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have forged one of dance music’s most successful and enduring creative partnerships. The Brothers have put out six albums (four of which topped the UK pop chart), numerous compilations, EPs, remixes and B-side only releases, and they’ve taken home three Grammys.

But when it came time for the London-based group to record its latest album, “We Are the Night” (slated for release June 19), those years of studio symbiosis couldn’t prevent Rowlands and Simons from bickering like, well, brothers about what they wanted “Night” to sound like.

“I’d like to think we knew what we were doing more this time around,” says Rowlands. “But of all the records we’ve made, this was the most -- ‘fractious’ is the wrong word. But we disagreed a lot. It got more tangled and complicated rather than more streamlined.”

Put another way, the Brothers -- whose sound is a bass-heavy amalgamation of acid house and stadium rock, psychedelia and hip-hop built around layer upon layer of samples -- found it tricky to avoid following in their own footsteps.

“We had a rule when we started this album that we weren’t going to refer to music we had made before,” Rowlands says. “We just wanted to make a record that we liked.”

He adds: “It seems so easy but it’s really a hellish puzzle. You ask yourself, ‘What is it, really, that I like?’ ”

Both Simons and Rowlands found common ground, however, in their admiration of the Klaxons -- the psychedelic prog-pop band that is reluctantly at the vanguard of Brit pop’s so-called nu rave movement -- and invited the group into the studio to cut the track “All Rights Reversed.”

“Of all the bands that are put into that thing, nu rave, they are the one with a spark of originality,” Rowlands says.

Reminded that the Chemical Brothers were “nu rave” in the early ‘90s, before the first wave of Ecstasy-fueled rave culture had dissipated, Rowlands grows somewhat wistful.

“We put together what we had experienced at raves -- the shared experience, the wildness of it, the fun -- with our love of rock and indie,” he says. “We didn’t want to be in a guitar band. We wanted to take the rawness and sweat and intensity you’d get from a rock band, but do that with electronic instruments.”

Connecting, or a spin and a miss?

NEW YORK Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez is on fire this season, having racked up more than 30 RBIs and a dozen home runs in fewer than 20 games. How perfect is it, then, that his at-bat anthem -- the song played at Yankee Stadium every time A-Rod steps up to home plate -- is “This Is Why I’m Hot” by New York rapper Mims?

You can tell a lot about a player by the music he chooses for his trip to the batter’s box. But generally speaking, the songs are high energy and get both the hitter and the home crowd pumped.

The Philadelphia Phillies’ Pat Burrell was known for taking the plate to the Dio headbanger classic “Holy Diver.” This year, however, he opted for Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” -- a song notable for its chorus: “Kick ‘em when they’re up / Kick ‘em when they’re down.”

New York Mets catcher Paul Lo Duca, meanwhile, has used the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” as his at-bat anthem. (Which is somewhat mystifying considering Shea Stadium’s Queens, N.Y., address.)

And currently, Dodger catcher Russell Martin is asking fans to help pick his at-bat song -- even if he is less than fully committed to whatever they vote for at the team’s website. And if the fans’ choice puts him into a slump, Martin says he’ll revert to Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky.”

Their emo feelings will be contained

RIPPING a page out of magician David Blaine’s suffering-for-your-craft-while-looking-stupid playbook, the members of Epic Records-signed rock group Cartel will go into a creative bubble -- literally -- to record their next album.

As part of a new multimedia marketing gimmick called Band in a Bubble presented by Dr Pepper, the Atlanta-based emo quintet will sequester itself inside a 40-feet-by-40-feet transparent bubble on Hudson River Park’s Pier 54 in New York for three solid weeks starting May 24.

There, Web cams will capture every songwriting misstep and triumph, every blown take and lyrical breakthrough the group encounters while laying down tracks for the follow-up to its critically hailed debut album “Chroma” (the curious will be able to take in the action in real time at www.drpepperbubble.com and then later on MTV and MTV2). And there’s no possibility for escape until the bubble “bursts” on June 12 and Cartel must perform a do-or-die set featuring the new material on the pier.

Runaways head

for the screen

THE late, great, all-female ‘70s jailbait rock band the Runaways is the latest pop act in line for the big screen biopic treatment, with “Neon Angels” now in the offing.

A coming-of-age story about the band, early on co-fronted by Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, “Angels” will draw on Currie’s unpublished memoir (the material is being adapted by writer-director Floria Sigismondi, a video ace who has directed clips for David Bowie and the White Stripes, among others).

As for the action, the filmmakers are promising plenty of drugs, sex and proto-riot grrrl feminism.

“We certainly utilized to our advantage our image as teenage girls who wore titillating clothes,” Jett said in Daily Variety. “But we also became an excellent band and made it OK for girls to play rock ‘n’ roll.”