Underworld

It's 1994, and Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have finally found the elusive missing piece, after years spent in what could be described as an exhausting phase of trial and error. Their intent is clear: to breathe new life into the early new wave stirrings glimpsed in their first two records, and to open up a brand-new chapter built around a techno-house alchemy that appears, on the surface, complex. To pull it off, the pair bring in Darren Emerson, a young English DJ on the rise in the buzzing acid-house scene of the time. A recruitment that reveals itself as a stroke of genius from the very start. With Emerson's arrival, the beginning of a dazzling trajectory takes shape, one that would establish them, in the years to come, as the standard-bearers of a thoroughly unique techno-wave blend unlike anything else in the global electronic firmament. The recipe, as is so often the case when miracles happen, is in fact formally "simple": dress the new wave/synth-pop ideas they'd originally pursued with "anonymous" flair in pulsing electronics. Emerson is, essentially, the rabbit pulled from the hat. The right man at the right time. It's his skill at the controls that gives fresh energy to the already inspired Underworld, launching their sound into dancefloor stratosphere with razor-sharp beats, forerunners of solutions later adopted by a host of other bands. Just to name a few, without shaking up too much the European techno-house-pop lineup straddling the Nineties and the 2000s, we could happily bring up Iceland's Gus Gus.

Having largely set aside the synth-pop/new romantic leanings shown under the Freur name, and having shaken off their hangover from the world of design, with "Dubnobasswithmyheadman" everything changes. The Hyde/Smith/Emerson trio set nine gems one after another, on one hand amplifying their dub approach, and on the other intensifying the rhythm section with barrages arranged with unquestionable class on drum machines and vintage synths. And so, wonders of the past like the Yamaha DX7 and the ARP 2600 take off in a progressive dance that fuses the acidity of pure, hard trance, electro flourishes and four-on-the-floor tribalism. A trip that is, in its own way, unprecedented, joined by Hyde's synthetic, biting lyricism. Lines like "Porn dogs sniffing the wind for something violent they can do", found in the memorable "Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You", spell out an acrid, nauseated, seemingly detached gaze at a contemporary city stripped of principles, and, to top it off, drained of its lifeblood, of that "primordial soup" that had made it great in decades past.

Underworld are also among the first visionaries to turn "Visual Art" — sequences of images projected onto a screen to accompany the sound — into a genuine live trademark. A vision as dreamlike as it is deeply immersive, drawing the listener into a kind of mechanized, rarefied world.

It's a party that's wild in places, wisely arranged, and alternated with chilly pauses whose sole purpose is to soften the electronic wave, its disruptive force. Underworld create an ecstasy of beats and rhythm changes that's impossible to resist. An epic movement laid down by Hyde after flying over the ocean and pondering that wonderful, mysterious force called gravity.

Thirty thousand feet above the earth. It’s a beautiful thing

And you’re a beautiful thing

Thirty thousand feet above the earth. It’s a beautiful thing

Everybody’s a beautiful thing

Mmm skyscraper i love you. Mmm skyscraper i love you

And I see Elvis! Elvis!

I see porn dogs sniffing the wind. Sniffing the wind for something new

The magic is far from over here. On “Dubnobasswithmyheadman”, there's room for some brilliantly successful experiments, like the one combining an ethereal guitar arpeggio with a synth line as austere as the space trajectories charted by the German cosmic couriers several decades earlier. That's the case with the gorgeous “Tongue”, placed at the centre of the record to lift the listener off the ground and carry them into some sci-fi oasis ante litteram. It's the prelude to the soaring flight of “Dirty Epic”, to its apparent stillness, broken by the usual rhythmic carpet with Emerson playing the juggler while Smith hams it up as a snake charmer. Yet in this cybernetic dance, faced with the relentless pace, the mood is far from the brightest:

I’m so dirty

And the light blinds my eyes

You’re oh so dirty

And the light it blinds my eyes

Here comes Christ on crutches

A grey passage that precedes the apotheosis of “Cowgirl”, de facto one of Underworld's most famous tracks. Played at the raves of the era and in saecula saeculorum by the finest DJs on the planet, as well as by hacks and dogs, a proto-synthesis of the all-encompassing “Born Slippy” that would soon storm cinemas and the hearts of a tired, drugged-out, lost generation, “Cowgirl” contains the entire Underworld playbook, with its intoxicating, explosive mix of ecstatic synths in constant search of some definitive light, and magnetic pulses. It's the album's nerve centre, the frenzy that disguises itself and shakes your backside, before the closing one-two brings everything back down to earth, or rather into the aforementioned sci-fi oasis. “River Of Bass” opens with a measured start, amid exotic flows and a keyboard that creeps in ever so slowly. A pit stop that anticipates the whipping bass of the closing “M.E.”, complete with a Japanese incipit, “Anatano yume ni watashi wo tamoteru” (trans. “Keep me in your dreams”), a track that vaguely follows a funky/fusion path, with piano that's as “elementary” and dreamy as ever, just enough to soothe a mind overwhelmed by the opening trio of tracks.

A starting block that, in the android groove of “Dark&Long”, as well as in the videogame-style techno-house assault of the famous “Surfboy” and the obsessive “Spoonman”, decodes the Underworld brand in its entirety, projecting it into the pantheon of the 90s' electronic greats, and ultimately upending the very essence of that thing called techno. A genre that had until then been somewhat confined, which, through Hyde and Smith's ideas, duly backed by Emerson's talent, finds an unexpected popular identity, a stature that's new and vibrant in its own way.

On “Dubnobasswithmyheadman”, Underworld prove themselves craftsmen of a sound that's in some ways unique, and undisputed masters of a chic brand of electronic music that can be sharp, warm, magnetic and fucking persuasive all at once.

Ride the wave of great music

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03/11/2019