MON., OCTOBER 23, 2006
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Underworld: Dark and Long
by Philip Sherburne
A colleague of mine describes Underworld as a "take 'em or leave 'em" proposition. He could be on to something. The British dance-music act built its fan-base largely on the strength of its 1996 album Second Toughest in the Infants and a pivotal appearance on the same year's Trainspotting soundtrack; for a time, they were one of the most recognizable brands in dance music. In the intervening decade, though, their star has largely dimmed, suggesting that more listeners have decided to leave 'em than take 'em. U.S. sales peaked at 160,000 with 1999's Beaucoup Fish, sliding to some 60,000 for 2002's A Hundred Days Off and just over half that for 2003's hits collection 1992-2002. Underworld remains active, continuing to record 12-inch singles and turning to the Internet to issue download-only audiovisual projects for diehard fans. (This October, they also released the soundtrack to Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, in collaboration with the Lebanese-French composer Gabriel Yared.) But even the band's members acknowledge the shift in their fortunes: "We wanted to go from very high profile on billboards and pages of magazines to being a word-of-mouth thing. We had to get out of the system that requires us to fulfill certain obligations in ways that don't always suit the artist," Karl Hyde recently told residentadvisor.net — not, perhaps, terribly convincingly.
It's interesting to consider Underworld as a divisive force, if only because an overview of Underworld's career reveals a band that is itself profoundly divided. (Maybe this shouldn't be surprising, given that in Underworld's peak years, the lineup consisted of two ex-new wavers and one progressive-house DJ.) Their polarizing abilities are evident in the comment from an eMusic subscriber who complains about the site's categorization of their iconic album Second Toughest in the Infants as house and techno: "Do you need help classifying music? This is not house. This is ambient." Of course, part of Underworld's strength has always been their ability to fuse numerous genres and influences: house, techno, breaks and, of course, rock.
Not that mixing such genres is anything new for an electronic act, certainly not for an act that came of age in the UK in the early to mid '90s, when house and techno still mingled with rock, "Madchester" style. Underworld largely built their appeal upon perfecting this merger. 1993's Dubnobasswithmyheadman draws upon electro-pop songwriting, knotty techno arpeggios, house music's pumping keys and the energetic rhythms of breakbeat hardcore; most of the album's tracks handily transcend the sum of their parts to become something utterly new. Listening now to the way Hyde's vocals dance around taut bass and bleeps in "Dark and Long," it's not hard to understand why this music sounded so otherworldly back then, nor why Underworld attracted the fan base they did. Despite their subterranean, Hades-hinting name, Underworld's real positioning has always been high above the earth, soaring on billowing waves of synth pads and guitar, steered by Hyde's meandering vocals. It's no coincidence that the second song on Dubnobasswithmyheadman is set "30,000 feet above the earth"; their music obviously aimed to be, in the words of their contemporaries Primal Scream, "higher than the sun."
In retrospect, though, Dubnobass begins to look something like an accident: a band-in-transition nailing the sweet spot purely by chance. (While it's generally considered their debut album, founding members Hyde and Rick Smith had in fact trotted out a more rock-oriented version of the group in the late '80s, recording two albums that are generally omitted from official band discographies.) 1996's Second Toughest in the Infants gained more listeners, but it's a far weaker album: scattered, often grasping at straws, seeming merely to go through the motions. Where Dubnobass showed Underworld to be masters of a particular kind of expansiveness, using timbre and psychoacoustic space to suggest immersive sound-worlds, Second Toughest feels more like a cut-and-paste job, a collage of pieces that don't really have anything to do with one another. "Confusion the Waitress" is the only track that retains the restraint of the earlier album; the rest feels either frantic ("Pearls Girl") or affectedly slack ("Stagger").
With 1999's Beaucoup Fish, Underworld sounds like a group struggling to reconcile its opposing tendencies. While the deeper, more nuanced tracks here — "Jumbo," "Cups," the swirling "Winjer" — are as generous and seductive as anything the band has ever done, the album's big singles — "Push Upstairs," "King of Snake," "Moaner" — clang uncomfortably, exercises in strident excess. Listening, it's easy to envision Underworld as a casualty of its own success: a main-stage act grown accustomed to playing enormous, amphetamine-fueled festival crowds, where altitude becomes not a luxury but an imperative. Reduced to facilitating the indefinite buildup of adrenaline and the unbridled release of serotonin, the group ends up flailing in its very pursuit of transcendence.
At Underworld's worst, it seems to be aping the noxious monotony of the burgeoning progressive house scene — piled-up snare rolls and endless ascents, the music in lockstep with the crowd's drug experience — so perhaps it's no coincidence that with the departure of Darren Emerson, whose DJ career is closely affiliated with the progressive scene, that Underworld seemed to come back to earth. Reduced to a duo, a kinder, gentler Underworld emerges on A Hundred Days Off. The swirling keyboards, conga and standup bass of "Twist" shows that Hyde and Smith still remember how to create a space of sonic possibility, as overdriven guitar and increasingly frantic Latin percussion turn a somber meditation into a smoldering workout. "Trim" is a fetching little fusion of blues guitar and 808, while the solo guitar of "Ess Gee" proves a perfectly proportioned folk miniature. More importantly, though, Hyde and Smith seem to have gotten a handle on the dance floor: no longer overshooting their mark, the pumping rhythms of tracks like "Mo Move" and "Two Months Off" are muscular but not heavy-handed. In a gesture towards the virtuosic balancing act of Dubnobass, "Little Speaker" attacks floor-filling drum programming with uncommon delicacy; with its minimalist profile, flashes of Latin jazz and sneaky hints of Detroit techno and Chicago house, it could almost be confused for an early track by Ricardo Villalobos or a recent cut from his compatriot Luciano.
With the benefit of a whole lot of hindsight, A Hundred Days Off sounds less like the contractual obligation of a group past its prime and more like the blueprint for what could be the best work of Underworld's career. With a lightness of touch you don't often hear in main-stage techno, the album reclaims the balance of Dubnobass and redefines the terms for any "take 'em or leave 'em" scenario. With a new album reportedly due by the end of the year, let's hope Underworld's low profile continues to prove as inspiring as their fall from grace did.
It's interesting to consider Underworld as a divisive force, if only because an overview of Underworld's career reveals a band that is itself profoundly divided. (Maybe this shouldn't be surprising, given that in Underworld's peak years, the lineup consisted of two ex-new wavers and one progressive-house DJ.) Their polarizing abilities are evident in the comment from an eMusic subscriber who complains about the site's categorization of their iconic album Second Toughest in the Infants as house and techno: "Do you need help classifying music? This is not house. This is ambient." Of course, part of Underworld's strength has always been their ability to fuse numerous genres and influences: house, techno, breaks and, of course, rock.
Not that mixing such genres is anything new for an electronic act, certainly not for an act that came of age in the UK in the early to mid '90s, when house and techno still mingled with rock, "Madchester" style. Underworld largely built their appeal upon perfecting this merger. 1993's Dubnobasswithmyheadman draws upon electro-pop songwriting, knotty techno arpeggios, house music's pumping keys and the energetic rhythms of breakbeat hardcore; most of the album's tracks handily transcend the sum of their parts to become something utterly new. Listening now to the way Hyde's vocals dance around taut bass and bleeps in "Dark and Long," it's not hard to understand why this music sounded so otherworldly back then, nor why Underworld attracted the fan base they did. Despite their subterranean, Hades-hinting name, Underworld's real positioning has always been high above the earth, soaring on billowing waves of synth pads and guitar, steered by Hyde's meandering vocals. It's no coincidence that the second song on Dubnobasswithmyheadman is set "30,000 feet above the earth"; their music obviously aimed to be, in the words of their contemporaries Primal Scream, "higher than the sun."
In retrospect, though, Dubnobass begins to look something like an accident: a band-in-transition nailing the sweet spot purely by chance. (While it's generally considered their debut album, founding members Hyde and Rick Smith had in fact trotted out a more rock-oriented version of the group in the late '80s, recording two albums that are generally omitted from official band discographies.) 1996's Second Toughest in the Infants gained more listeners, but it's a far weaker album: scattered, often grasping at straws, seeming merely to go through the motions. Where Dubnobass showed Underworld to be masters of a particular kind of expansiveness, using timbre and psychoacoustic space to suggest immersive sound-worlds, Second Toughest feels more like a cut-and-paste job, a collage of pieces that don't really have anything to do with one another. "Confusion the Waitress" is the only track that retains the restraint of the earlier album; the rest feels either frantic ("Pearls Girl") or affectedly slack ("Stagger").
With 1999's Beaucoup Fish, Underworld sounds like a group struggling to reconcile its opposing tendencies. While the deeper, more nuanced tracks here — "Jumbo," "Cups," the swirling "Winjer" — are as generous and seductive as anything the band has ever done, the album's big singles — "Push Upstairs," "King of Snake," "Moaner" — clang uncomfortably, exercises in strident excess. Listening, it's easy to envision Underworld as a casualty of its own success: a main-stage act grown accustomed to playing enormous, amphetamine-fueled festival crowds, where altitude becomes not a luxury but an imperative. Reduced to facilitating the indefinite buildup of adrenaline and the unbridled release of serotonin, the group ends up flailing in its very pursuit of transcendence.
At Underworld's worst, it seems to be aping the noxious monotony of the burgeoning progressive house scene — piled-up snare rolls and endless ascents, the music in lockstep with the crowd's drug experience — so perhaps it's no coincidence that with the departure of Darren Emerson, whose DJ career is closely affiliated with the progressive scene, that Underworld seemed to come back to earth. Reduced to a duo, a kinder, gentler Underworld emerges on A Hundred Days Off. The swirling keyboards, conga and standup bass of "Twist" shows that Hyde and Smith still remember how to create a space of sonic possibility, as overdriven guitar and increasingly frantic Latin percussion turn a somber meditation into a smoldering workout. "Trim" is a fetching little fusion of blues guitar and 808, while the solo guitar of "Ess Gee" proves a perfectly proportioned folk miniature. More importantly, though, Hyde and Smith seem to have gotten a handle on the dance floor: no longer overshooting their mark, the pumping rhythms of tracks like "Mo Move" and "Two Months Off" are muscular but not heavy-handed. In a gesture towards the virtuosic balancing act of Dubnobass, "Little Speaker" attacks floor-filling drum programming with uncommon delicacy; with its minimalist profile, flashes of Latin jazz and sneaky hints of Detroit techno and Chicago house, it could almost be confused for an early track by Ricardo Villalobos or a recent cut from his compatriot Luciano.
With the benefit of a whole lot of hindsight, A Hundred Days Off sounds less like the contractual obligation of a group past its prime and more like the blueprint for what could be the best work of Underworld's career. With a lightness of touch you don't often hear in main-stage techno, the album reclaims the balance of Dubnobass and redefines the terms for any "take 'em or leave 'em" scenario. With a new album reportedly due by the end of the year, let's hope Underworld's low profile continues to prove as inspiring as their fall from grace did.
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