Titus writes:
As a lover of good electronic music, I feel I must
talk about Underworld, who in a fairly long and varied musical career,
have become a favourite. I can hardly believe that they were formed in
Cardiff as long ago as 1987 as a twosome project of Karl Hyde and Rick
Smith. These two were initially joined by Alfie Thomas, Bryn Burrows
and Baz Allen. When I first listened to them, they were one of many
bands offering funk & synth pop, but as the nineties dawned, they
took a slight turn towards dance & techno. It is with this genre
of music, that Underworld have been influential to a number of artists,
and have also diversified into writing film soundtracks/scores,
televisual material, plus amazingly they wrote some music for the
London Olympics of 2012. Disbanding in 1990, due to a variety of
reasons which I won’t go into in order to save space, Hyde and Smith
recruited Darren Emerson, forming, in effect, ‘Underworld Mark 2’.
Hyde had been the lead singer in ‘Underworld Mark 1’, but in the new
set up. the three concentrated on a kind of rock-techno fusion, and
eliminated the pop element from their work.
The
band’s second album ‘Second toughest in the Infants’ achieved a
certain amount of commercial success, in that a couple of tracks were
featured in the film ‘Trainspotting’. ‘Born Slippy’ is one of
Underworld’s best known tunes , and is widely acclaimed as being one of
the greatest dance tracks of the nineties, if not of all time. Sadly
Emerson left the band in 2000 to concentrate on projects of his own,
leaving Hyde and Smith to continue as a duo. They released a new album
called ‘Everything, Everything’ and the release met general approval,
and its general sound seemed quite similar to when Emerson was a member
of the band. Whilst touring in 2005, Hyde and Smith were joined by
Darren Price, a respected DJ who had remixed for the band in the past,
and Underworld released an ambitious 3 CD set ‘Live in Tokyo’, which
was sold after their Japanese tour and later online. Following this,
they released a series of other new live material in a series called
‘Riverrun’. Price would stay with the band until 2016.
In
2004, the band contributed to the BBC celebration of John Peel’s life
‘Keeping it Peel’, providing a DJ set for the programme’s broadcast on
16 December 2004. They clearly thought a lot of the iconic &
influential disc jockey, who had championed their music and arranged 2
sessions in 2003 & 2004. In 2006 they teamed up with Gabriel Yared
to compose the score to the Anthony Minghella film ‘Breaking and
Entering’. Not a lot of people know that, in 2007, Underworld were
forced to cancel their set at a festival in Athens, when Greek
anarchists stormed the stadium while the Beastie Boys were performing.
Rick was injured in the violence that followed and was taken to
hospital for treatment. Two years later, history all but repeated
itself (this time without injury, thankfully) when audience members
climbed down rows of seats and onto the main floor of the Los Angeles
Forum, causing abandonment on safety grounds.
With
almost a year to go before the 2012 London Olympics, Underworld were
chosen to direct the music for the Opening Ceremony, with Ceremony
Director, Danny Boyle. The band also contributed two tracks of their
own ‘And I will Kiss’ & ‘Caliban’s Dream’, and for their
contribution to the Games they won the Q Award for Innovation in
Sound. Talking of Awards, Underworld won a Grammy Award nomination for
their 2016 LP ‘Barbara, Barbara, we face a shining future’ The band
have seen so much success in their history, that this short blog cannot
possibly mention or discuss its entirety, They continue to have their
fingers in many pies, with composing, performing, entering new
projects and generally experimenting, Their new album ‘ Strawberry
Hotel’ is due for release on 25 October 2024, and having heard a sneak
preview of some tracks, I can assure you, it’s good. As in all of my
blogs, I could have asked Lex to play loads of excellent Underworld
tracks, but the one I have requested this week is ‘Moon in Water’ from
the ‘Barking’ LP.