Underworld - An electronic skyline

The pre-techno era. Doot Doot.

Watching Karl Hyde's shaved, gleaming head emerge from the strobe lights of Underworld's now-legendary live sets, it's hard to believe that barely twenty years earlier he was a backcombed, big-haired figure dressed in sequins and squeezed into skinny trousers. Yes, because in the 1980s Karl Hyde and his longtime musical partner Rick Smith fronted a synth-pop group called Freur, whose biggest hit was the dreamy single "Doot Doot", which topped the Italian charts in 1983.

Those were the days of analogue synth excess and fuchsia lipstick, but Freur counted for little on the market compared to the era's sacred monsters (Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys, Human League), and their label at the time, CBS, didn't take long to drop them. Changing their name to Underworld and releasing two fairly bland funk-rock albums (Beneath The Radar in '88 and Change The Weather in '89, mentioned here only for the record) didn't change much. After a stint supporting the Eurythmics on their last American tour (naturally, before the recent reunion of the Stewart-Lennox duo), Underworld were musically and physically adrift from the scene.

The 1990s. The Underworld sound.

But something was changing in those pill-fuelled, confused years that were waving goodbye to the Eighties and ushering in the Nineties. The words that should now be surfacing in the reader's mind are acid-house, Detroit techno, hardcore, progressive (in its electronic sense). Returning home, Hyde and Smith found their UK swept up in the whirlwind of raves and that new way of making - and living - electronic music, which today seems so normal to us. Paradoxically, while on the pop-rock front the slick production and studied vocals of the '80s (in Hyde's words: "That minimal, raw, stripped-bare music") were being disgustedly disowned, the pioneers of modern dance music (Derrick May, the father of techno; Marshall Jefferson, the father of house; the newborn Warp Records) were busy treasuring the countless innovative musical and technological elements that had emerged in that much-maligned decade. All this matters a great deal in understanding why the album that brought the real Underworld sound to the world is considered one of the most important records of the decade.

Before recording Dubnobasswithmyheadman (Junior Records, 1994), in fact, Underworld "adopted" a third member, Darren Emerson, a very young English DJ thoroughly at home in the acid-house scene of the moment. The declared aim was to enter the world of clubs, a musical dimension that was already exploding, and to do away with a band built on conventional roles.

If Hyde and Smith showed foresight in investing in the figure of the DJ (nowadays as famous and well paid as the rock star), Emerson was equally far-sighted in preserving the duo's old musical approach, helping to shape those distinctive traits that still define Underworld today: a leaning towards melodic suites in the vocal parts; the use of guitars; hypnotic, isolated waves of synth; and finally the clipped, dreamlike riffs, a trailing echo of the old ambient-pop of "Doot Doot".

A perfect illustration of all this is the flagship track of Dubnobasswithmyheadman, the famous "Mmm Syscraper I Love You": the keyboards open an acidic ceremony of low, nervy techno, driven by Hyde's vocals, as warm and melodious in the verses as they are sharp and hypnotic whenever the rhythm surges, becoming obsessive and syncopated more than once ("Dark And Long", "Surfboy", "Spoonman"). These are the first stirrings of drum'n'bass, the sped-up, low-slung, acidic offshoot of techno, where the "bass" dominates the scene absolutely, chasing itself in a potentially endless echo, while the "breaks" cut through this dark suburban march like flashes of light.

"Porn dogs sniffing the wind for something violent" is just one of Hyde's acid-metropolitan lyrics. With verses bordering on nonsense, Underworld celebrate an emptied-out city, alienated, wild and primitive. A kind of sci-fi fight-club scenario where the music is visual: a screen that filters the perception of reality much like a hallucinogen. (It's no coincidence that Underworld were among the first groups to accompany their live performances with so-called "Visual Art", sequences of images projected onto a screen specifically to match corresponding sequences of sound.)

Compositions like "Tongue" and "River Of Bass", balanced between underground fog and shafts of light reflected off skyscraper windows, almost recall the dichotomy (dark litany versus melodic surges towards pure, rarefied atmospheres) of the trip-hop sound, another musical movement that was just emerging from Sheffield.

Set against the backdrop of 1992, Underworld's originality and timing feel truly exceptional. Their sound stood out all the more given that labels of the era were hostile to vocal parts in dance music, which was itself ghettoised in terms of audience, live shows and promotion. It was non-music. But things were about to change.

Techno goes pop. Born Slippy.

Second Toughest In The Infants (Junior Records, 1995), their second and semi-forgotten chapter, has nothing to envy musically from the debut. If anything, it's its natural evolution: Underworld don't give up their mesmerizing techno litanies, reaching even higher compositional heights, while the trio continues to contribute to the maturation and spread of drum'n'bass. Hyde, Smith and Emerson once again anticipate the times with a softer, more ambient, almost chill-out version of this latter genre. As suburban as trip-hop, but more liquid, fluid, warm: listening to "Banstyle/Sappy's Curry" is like watching the metropolis teeming with nightlife from the soft, welcoming seat of a taxi. This is the record where the Underworld sound becomes defined and all-encompassing, and the aching pop of "Stagger" is nothing less than a wonderful closing theme to the synthesis achieved by the excellent first single, "Pearl Girl".

In truth, the sudden gathering of dust on Second Toughest In The Infants has one clear culprit. As an unreleased track put out as a single that same year, the band chose a song the whole world would come to hear about: "Born Slippy".

Named in homage to a racing greyhound, this techno-progressive dirge (since this is neither the time nor the place to dwell on the complex meaning of "progressive" in techno-house, let the more curious reader settle for viewing it as the (ab)use of short sound loops aimed at the catharsis of rhythm) boasts one of the most staggering intros in the whole history of music. It's precisely the stentorian yet dreamlike echo of a track "born slipping" that struck, among others, director Danny Boyle, who chose it as the soundtrack for the cult film "Trainspotting" (1996). The enveloping bounce of the song's only two chords accompanies the protagonist's final monologue, the now-historic "choose life": a bitter, ruthlessly honest portrait of a generation, that of 90s youth, defeated, surrendering; victims of heroin, of acid house, and of their own desperate rage. "Born Slippy" automatically becomes the definitive anthem, breathless and yearning, of those years, and marks a turning point in electronic music. After its widespread, endemic reach, which brought it the fame of a historic pop hit and probably made it the best-known techno track in the world, after its radio edits (to avoid the 7 minutes of hardcore four-on-the-floor, barely bearable for the average listener, playlisters would often cut out the middle section, much as happened to the instrumental solo of the Doors' "Light My Fire"), people would say: dance music is dead.

In reality, "Born Slippy" simply closes, in the best possible way, a chapter of music too often overlooked, the one telling the story of Underworld, Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Primal Scream, that is, the acts who, through the use of vocals and distinctive sonorities, contributed the most to ending the ghettoization of electronic music, to its triumphant entry into the charts and rock festivals (Underworld's first appearance at Glastonbury in 1992 has something historic about it; they would repeat it seven years later in front of a crowd there to see U2), and, above all, to its global spread.

The masterpiece. Beaucoup Fish

Getting back to our story, after the reissue of "Born Slippy" (the single "Born Slippy NUXX") and an endless tour that would later become an excellent live album (Everything Everything, Junior Records, 2000), Underworld still have something to say (besides various remixes for big 90s names such as Björk, Massive Attack, Depeche Mode, Leftfield and Everything But The Girl) to this dance music that seems anything but dying. In 1998, in fact, they return to the studio to produce what is probably their definitive masterpiece, their own "Abbey Road": Beaucoup Fish (Junior Records, 1999). The name evokes New Orleans and a blend of sounds and cultures, a declared and fulfilled intent. With sharper definition than their previous work, this record reveals Underworld's greatest gift: in electronic music, where a new genre is just a pane of glass that immediately shatters into a thousand other fragments, they manage to take in, at a glance, a skyline of music that may not be complete, but sounds incomparably thorough, rich, superior; techno and trance intertwine with multiple sonic elements in ever-shifting forms, moving toward sublimation.

Beaucoup Fish is a journey of discovery: "Cups", a low, distorted held breath, punctuated by cuts that sound like a swimmer's gasps, then dies triumphantly in an acid-keyboard solo. "Push Upstairs", another historic single built on Hyde's voice, over cascades of acid techno and soft chord tones (that very same kind of tonality now goes by the name "old school"). "Jumbo", which marries dream-pop and minimal drum'n'bass with a simple "click". "Winjer", four minutes of tribal techno followed by four aching minutes of digital ballad ("Skym"). "Bruce Lee", which brushes up against breakbeat (in full bloom right around that time, thanks to the work of Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim). Then their famously syncopated marches on the fringes of hardcore-trance ("King Of Snake", "Kittens", "Moaner"), an example for anyone making club music: never boring, never predictable, never sloppy. Underworld handle rhythms, basslines and breaks with simply perfect timing, and with "Push Downstairs", the dark mirror of the galvanized rhythm of its twin "Push Upstairs", its negative, the "down" that follows the comedown, the cold air of dawn, with the speakers still buzzing in your ears, Underworld steep their finest record, a true masterpiece, in reality and pure beauty. "These are my intentions", sings Hyde on behalf of every moved listener.

Farewells. The present day.

Far inferior, on the other hand, is their last studio album, A Hundred Days Off (JBO, 2002). Even allowing for Darren Emerson's departure (now a house DJ on the Ibiza scene) as a general weakening of their musical bite, the record barely holds together on a minimal level of imagination, or, to put it bluntly, it's simply bad. Except for a few (rare) moments where Underworld's keyboards once again find their old bite ("Two Months Off", "Little Speaker"), the rest is deadly dull, and Hyde's voice doesn't seem able to do anything about it.

The duo's most recent releases are the singles collection ("Anthology 1992-2002", JBO, 2003), which can be considered a solid best-of for anyone wanting to approach the band; and, from the same year, a re-reissue of the single "Born Slippy", not to be missed by lovers of the subtle art of the remix.

In 2006 came Breaking & Entering Soundtrack, the soundtrack to the film of the same name, on which the duo is joined by an already well-seasoned collaborator, Gabriel Yared, who has splendidly scored some of the finest sequences in films like "The Talented Mr. Ripley", "The English Patient", "Cold Mountain" and "City Of Angels".

A year later comes the new album, Oblivion With Bells, an unremarkable record, with a couple of big missteps, the result of lapses in taste unusual for a band that has always made class one of its trademarks, namely "Ring Road" and "Boy, Boy, Boy", but still with flashes of their old genius lurking underground, ready to surface and show itself in all its beauty.

"Beautiful Burnout" gathers up the old glories, that stream-of-consciousness typical of Hyde's vocal delivery once again pairs with Smith's relentless rhythm, soaring to great heights within a stretched-out trance beneath the filtered words. There's the spirit of "Born Slippy" turned around and broken down into fractions. It's the only point of contact with a bygone story, along with the ambient openings of "Best Mangu Ever", which still show traces of inspiration and vitality.

What remains is a polished, carefully crafted mannerism, something to toy with for a while and then quickly forget, still hoping that the next one will be the right turn, a few years from now, after a few more unexpected encounters.

Barking, a new course.

In 2010, three years after Oblivion With Bells, Barking saw the light of day, bringing fresh signs of life. Thanks to collaborations with some well-known names from the electronic scene of recent years, including Mark Knight, Appleblim and Paul Van Dyk, the English outfit once again leaves its mark on the techno scene with real personality, absorbing some of the sonic traits typical of those who worked on the record. So we pass through the progressive house landscapes of "Always Loved a Film", the nocturnal UK-garage of "Hamburg Hotel" and the guitar-driven trance of "Diamond Jigsaw".

After years in which an inevitable decline seemed likely, with Barking comes a masterful last stand, as the band plays with the sounds of the moment and gathers up what's good around them, without the burning need to astonish or innovate any longer - a chapter they'd already fully written in the past.

With the release of the album (whose sound engineering credits also include the ghostly presence of Darren Emerson) live activity picked up again too, underlining - if there was ever any need - that Underworld are still synonymous with one of the most powerful acts of the past decade and more.

To seal Underworld's twenty-year career, 2012 saw the release of the triple compilation 1992-2012 - The Anthology, an essential guide to understanding their work.

Reinspired, Underworld forcefully reclaim their central place in the global electronic scene with Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future, released in March 2016, a varied and composite work. Not everything shines as brightly as in their golden years, of course, but the opening is immediately convincing, with the rock-oriented approach of "I Exhale". The effectively declamatory pattern that characterizes "If Rah" is followed by the pulsing groove of "Low Burn", exactly the track longtime Underworld fans would have wished for today (well, here it is, wish granted), a collective propitiatory ritual that rekindles old memories (perhaps a little hazy by now) of endless raves and Ibiza beaches - the real reason we're drawn to a new record by the veteran duo in 2016. Halfway through the tracklist, "Santiago Cuatro" is an acoustic-textured landscape laced with ethnic flavors, the bridge into the second half of the record, which is markedly softer and more atmospheric, unfolding through the cinematic ambient scenery (a touch too monochromatic) of "Motorhome" and the equally soft and dispensable mid-tempo of "Ova Nova", before the closing dance-pop drift of "Nylon Strung" brings everyone back to the dancefloor for one last elegant (if also vaguely melancholy) spin.

If you were twenty in the 90s and lived through, or at least caught a whiff of, the club culture of the era, you won't be able to help falling in love with a record like this. The first half earns a full 7 (and then some), the second clings on by its fingernails to a bare 6: if the future of Karl Hyde and Rick Smith doesn't turn out to be shining (though they've earned their peace of mind for what they achieved across three decades of activity), at the very least we're looking at a present that gives no indication of an early retirement - quite the opposite.

Then comes a jarring yet, in some ways, natural collaboration: Iggy Pop and Underworld, two names with very little in common, yet ones we've been used to seeing side by side, in hundreds of thousands of playlists, ever since the 1996 film "Trainspotting". It took "T2", however, to actually bring the two together, since Danny Boyle entrusted the soundtrack to Rick Smith, and it was through that project that Iggy and Underworld finally met. The recorded material didn't end up in the film's soundtrack though, but on an EP titled Teatime Dub Encounters (2018).

The opening is suitably fiery. "Bells & Circles" barely has time to show off its tribal skeleton before a fat, pulsing BPM swells it up the way they used to do back in the 90s. Not the kind of backdrop Iggy is used to, in other words, but there's no arguing with the man's personality, and so there he is, dominating the scene, recounting the days when you could smoke on planes and how much he loved doing it. The closing section is also very successful, with Rick Smith raising the darkness level of the synths and reshuffling the proportions of the beats for a chaotic, agitated finale. The second course, "Trapped", doesn't work quite as well, dominated as it is by an obsessive synth line that isn't exactly original. On "Get Your Shirt", Iggy Pop rambles that someone stole his shirt and he wants it back - as if going shirtless had ever been a problem for him. All around is a riot of 80's-style synths, duly slowed-down beats and sinuous backing vocals that sound drugged on Kate Bush. Put like that, it sounds like a delirium with neither head nor tail, and yet it works brilliantly, ending up as the standout track of the bunch.

We've already talked about Iggy - his spoken word is charismatic and spellbinding - but Karl Hyde is a top-class supporting player, equally capable of dropping a gutsy chorus like the one on "Bells & Circles" and of sketching backdrops made of echoes and metallic howls for the musings on friendship in "I'll See Big".

Teatime Dub Encounters is what it says it is: a teatime divertissement recorded in comfortable hotel rooms rather than a studio with mile-long mixing desks, but given the personalities of the three dinner guests involved, it ends up being a thoroughly respectable work containing a couple of numbers we'll remember.

In 2024, meanwhile, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith return with a new album, Strawberry Hotel, which revisits their most classic sound and takes us back to that 90s alternative electronica so steeped in underground club culture. Underworld's "Strawberry Hotel" is a psychedelic, multifaceted place, at least when you first step through the front door. But the interior calls back more to the same surreal, futuristic dreams and visions the duo have given us over the past thirty years, and the resulting sonic dreaminess isn't the soft, seductive kind found in psychedelia: it's still as sharp, raw and dazzling as ever.

The construction of the electronic atmospheres is underpinned by a modern, meticulous production that nonetheless doesn't skimp on indulging in a rediscovery of those more classic - nostalgic, even - sounds that have defined the band's style ever since that cult album, Dubnobasswithmyheadman, which, as it happens, came out exactly thirty years ago, in 1994.

Some of the tracks are driven by paradoxical, nonsensical lyrics, caught between reason and instinct, arranged as ever in a stream of consciousness that translates into fast, rattled-off vocals - not quite rap, but an argumentative delivery that follows the same speed as the music. Others, however, leave ample space for choruses, melismas, harmonies and distorted voices aiming at something celestial.

On one hand, then, the themes break out of the mold: "The strawberry jam girl sees Mickey Mouse outside the window/ I look up and see it's just my reflection", sings Karl Hyde on "Denver Luna". It reads like something out of John Lennon. On the other hand, we find more human, immediate and profound reflections: "Change might seem a little strange to you at first/ But keep on changing", we hear on "Black Poppies", the album's intro.

The duo thus prove capable of handling a range of languages and rediscovering the various facets of their sound in multiple directions. We go from the indie-style electronics of "Techno Shinkansen" - which could pass for a Four Tet track - to the obsessive, uncompromising "And The Colour Red", passing through the angelic fantasy of "Hilo Sky" and down to the accelerated trip-hop of "King Of Haarlem".

And then there's the psychedelic house of “Sweet Lands Experience”, the long atmospheric journey of “Gene Pool” and the more classic, characteristic techno of “Denver Luna”, the album's best track. You can tell Underworld have learned a lot, but also that, both nearing 70, they're more determined than ever to stay true to themselves.

Contributions by Alberto Guidetti (“Oblivion With Bells” and “Barking”) and Claudio Lancia (“Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future”), Andrea Campana (“Strawberry Hotel”)

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