Here comes Christ on crutches..

It's taken me a while to fully coalesce my thoughts on Underworld, but I am now in a position to declare them as my defacto favourite Electronic act of all time.  I will try to explain why here, but I know even before I start I won't do Karl Hyde, Rick Smith (and Darren Emerson) justice.

I adore them.

Second Toughest In The Infants was my entry point with the group, who by that time had ditched their eighties electro-pop band aesthetic and wisely recruited Emerson into the fold.

Prior to this they'd released their debut offering as a techno/progressive house/trance/breakbeat act: the superb dubnobasswithmyheadman in 1994.  More of that a little later.

STITI was purchased by me on spec in 1996 upon its release, and despite hearing a few tracks from dubnobasswithmyheadman I didn't really know exactly what I was letting myself in for, but had a sense from both the beautiful and mysteriously crafted album art (by Tomato, a multi-disciplinary design and film collective of which Hyde and Smith are members) and the aforementioned Q magazine best Electronic albums of 1994, where I'd read about them but not fully paid attention.

I was going to now, for sure.

1996 was the year I left school before going to university in Nottingham and part of my summer was spent working as an intern for an engineering firm in Hamburg, courtesy of a contact my Dad had known and done contracts with. I stayed with the family and their son Bjorn who was a similar age.  We hit it off and bonded over a collective love of music.  He loved punk and metal, so not directly associated to this post but certainly opened a few different genre doors for me.

I mention my time in Germany as STITI was basically my soundtrack to this summer, walking or taking the bus to work and immersing myself in the beats, samples and Hyde's beautiful and pseudo-nonsensical vocal poems.

The album itself is perfect in its conception, execution, ordering, production and pace.  Without going into the individual tracks in massive detail I'll state that as a complete work it is beautiful, haunting, energetic, mysterious and triumphant in relative measure.

Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream Of Love is a leviathan of a track and pure beats, with Hyde exclaiming "there is a sound on the other side of this wall a bird is singing on the other side of this glass, footsteps concealed, silence is preserving a voice".  Wow.

Pearl's Girl is an Exocet missile of a track, never letting up and its thunderous complex beats and tribal call lyrics by Hyde defy convention.

Stagger closes STITI with a beautifully crafted comedown track, utterly the inverse of Pearl's Girl or Juanita... but done to perfection with Hyde invoking the sad desolation of a morning walk through the streets of a once proud city.  This was often played on my bus ride home in Hamburg.

It was probably 3-6 months after this I flipped back into dubnobasswithmyheadman and discovered an equally cohesive and diverse album, hinting at the STITI format but not emulating it before the fact.

Tracks like Dark & Long, Mmm...Skyscraper I Love You, Dirty Epic and the superb Cowgirl were hints to likely paths to follow, but Tongue and River Of Bass went down the stripped back route and Underworld had now found a way across these 2 albums to blend intensity and subtlety really, really well.

The 20th anniversary re-issue sought to bring out remastered tracks and add in 8 b-sides or remixes, including Trainspotting movie track Dark & Long (Dark Train / Remastered) - an improvement on the album original in my opinion - and the absolutely essential live classic Rez, which played alongside Cowgirl just carries you along to the place of euphoria you crave as a listener. It was the standout track of the Alexandra Palace gig I was so fortunate to go to with my good friend Ben last year on 17th March 2017.  I swooned for 2 hours, and rightly so.  It was epic, from Smith's beats and mixing to Hyde's croon and snake hips.

This brings me on to talk briefly about the track that made Underworld famous to the wider world: the ubiquitous Born Slippy (NUXX).  Trainspotting was a hit for rookie Director Danny Boyle and the track was the standout, being played in clubs up and down the country. Maybe it's the overplayed nature of the track or the fact I (and others) dug deeper that I never really found it to be a favorite of mine.  In the right mood, I enjoy it for what it is, but when Hyde sings "lager, lager lager" it just conjures up images of people who don't really love their music tagging along for whatever short ride they are taking.  I invested deeper so felt a little entitled to say it.

1998 saw the release of Beaucoup Fish, another diverse mix of Underworld offerings from the lounge-esque (and smooth as hell) Cups, to the super-urgent and intense Push Upstairs, to the expansive and swirling Jumbo and crowd live favourite Shudder/King Of Snake, which segues from a disorted guitar/synth ambience into a breakneck speed full on techno ruck.

The second half of the album tails off slightly (and only slightly, mind) with some now-lesser-listened-to offerings but its still a grand effort nonetheless and contributed massively to the live sets of Underworld heretofore (see 2000's Everything Everything for live versions of the back catalogue to date, you won't be disappointed).

A 4 year break - and Emerson's departure due to a want to focus on solo projects and his label - meant Underworld returned as a duo in 2002 with A Hundred Days Off, critically hailed as a weaker effort and lacking something without the assumed cohesiveness Emerson brought to the project.  Maybe it was Hyde's earlier battles with alcoholism that played a part in this, but for me AHDO is a superb album.

Opener No Move invokes memories of me donning my earphones before skiing down the Austrian alps on holiday with friends to the heavy beats, as AHDO was pretty much my soundtrack to 2006-8 (I came to it late!), Two Months Off bumps and judders urgently along with Hyde exclaiming "you bring light in" over and over, Twist is another lounge-esque track like Cups and Dinosaur Adventure 3D is an awesome canter through pure beats and the techno thump-thump-thump that recalls STITI's more upbeat moments.

2007's Oblivion With Bells takes a step up again in quality with my favorite tracks being Crocodile, Beautiful Burnout, Holding The Moth, To Heal (used to beautiful effect on Boyle's sci-fi epic Sunshine), Glam Bucket and Best Mamgu Ever.  It's strange to note at this point that each album follows an aesthetic path (heavy beat tracks and pseudo-ambient ones) yet it doesn't in any way feel contrived, repetitive or like you've been there before.  The subtleties of music writing have been honed perfectly by Smith and Hyde and they've never truly deviated from their roots.  If you played something from 1994 and 2016 back to back to someone who didn't know Underworld they'd probably think it was the same album.

A 3 year break and 2010 heralded the arrival of Barking, the album I ran a half-marathon to.  The Bath half marathon to be precise!

Bird 1, Always Loved A Film, Scribble, Between Stars, Diamond Jigsaw: these are the pavement pounders that was my soundtrack to the 13 miles covered. Stadium-esque in their grandeur they are all wonderful pieces of smile-creating music, especially the frenetic Scribble which is pretty much jungle/drum & bass.

The slower tracks Hamburg Hotel and the wonderful Louisiana add the suitable dose of calm to the storm. Louisiana especially is clever, as utilises Hyde's vocals with a reverb sample. It makes him sound like a heartbroken robot, but it just works so, so well.

2012's retrospective gave Underworld a chance to take stock and release a back catalogue of hits alongside remixes and well loved b-sides.  It works, its ace....check it out.  I did.  Of the tracks I hadn't hear before Spikee was my favorite.

This brings us almost up to date except for 2016's oddly titled (but no less brilliant) Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future, which was wonderfully interwoven into the set at Ally Pally last year.

I Exhale, If Rah, Low Burn and Ova Nova are my favorites amongst the relatively short 7-track offering.  Luckily for me, 3 of them were in the set:

1.   Mmm...Skyscraper, I Love You

2.   Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream Of Love

3.   I Exhale

4.   If Rah

5.   Dark & Long (Dark Train)

6.   Two Months Off

7.   Scribble

8.   Cups

9.   Ring Road

10. King Of Snake

11. Kittens

12. Jumbo

13. Low Burn

14. Rez/Cowgirl

15. Moaner

16. Born Slippy (NUXX)

A wonderful few hours and an absolute delight for me as someone who'd FINALLY managed to see his idols a mere 21 years after hearing STITI and falling in love.

I could go on.  I won't.  I have said enough for now but I leave you with my one hope: that they do more for the sake of the fans who adore them but they stop when it starts to feel forced or when the enjoyment has gone. Looking up at Karl Hyde and Rick Smith's faces on that night at Alexandra Palace as they took the applause from 10,000 fans, I am guessing they won't be stopping just yet...

Badger x