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Gli Underworld sono stati per tutti gli anni '90 uno dei progetti piu`
influenti della musica da ballo. La rivoluzione apportata dal gruppo e` stata
prima di tutto di costume, in quanto gli Underworld adattarono il costume del
rock al techno (si esibivano dal vivo e si atteggiavano a star).
Musicalmente compirono un'operazione di sintesi che partiva in realta` dalla
disco music di Giorgio Moroder.
Il progetto nacque quando Karl Hyde e Rick Smith posero fine ai Freur,
gia` titolari dell'hit del 1983 Doot Doot
e degli album Freut (1983) e Get Us Out Of Here (1985).
I primi singoli spiegano come gli Underworld (in cui militavano di fatto i
quattro quinti dei Freur) volessero replicare il trucco di
Dark Side Of The Moon (Pink Floyd) nell'era dei rave:
trasformare il formato della canzone pop grazie alla tecnologia di studio.
A dir la verita`, Mmm Skyscraper I Love You (Junior Boy's Own),
Rez, Cowgirl e Spikee sembrano semplicemente rifare il
verso alla new wave di 15 anni prima.
Gli album
Underneath The Radar (Sire, 1988) e
Change The Weather (Sire, 1989) furono altrettanto puerili.
Il secondo, fortemente influenzato dai Kraftwerk, annoverava un ensemble
di sette musicisti con batteria e basso.
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Underworld, the trio of disc-jockey Darren Emerson, vocalist/guitarist Karl Hyde and keyboardist) Rick Smith, pioneered "big beat".
Rock guitars, electronic dance beats and spoken-word found a magic intersection in the lengthy tracks of Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994), each a chameleon continuously changing in texture, melody and tempo without ever losing its identity. The album, a tour de force of dance production techniques, referenced the insistent sequencers of Giorgio Moroder's disco-music but was mainly a container of sound effects, polyrhythms and haunting melodic fragments.
Second Toughest In The Infants (1996) reprised the combination of
existential mood and fantasia-like melodic collage.
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Underworld was reborn as a dance-music unit after Hyde spent some time in New
York, learning the new trends in sampling and spoken vocals.
Twenty-year old disc-jockey Darren Emerson became the leading creative force
behind the new sound
of the singles The Hump and Dirty (credited to Lemon Interrupt),
that were clearly addressing the dance clubs.
Pared down to the trio of Emerson (beats and computers), Hyde (vocals and
guitar) and Smith (keyboards), Underworld set about to reinvent the concept
of dance-rock around the concept of "remixing". In particular, Underworld
took aim at casual conversation and at Hyde's guitar.
Rock and roll, electronic dance music and spoken word had found a magic point
of intersection.
Dubnobasswithmyheadman (Junior Boy's Own, 1994) was their breakthrough
album. Each of the nine lengthy and atmospheric tracks is a chameleon,
constantly changing in texture, melody and tempo without ever
losing its identity.
Dark And Long opens the album
with the insistent sequencers of Giorgio Moroder's
From Here To Eternity coupled with whistling electronics that could be
from a Stan Ridgway album. A detached
recitative and African percussions move front stage and the song takes shape.
It is, needless to say, a depressed slab of existential weltanschaung.
That mood carries over to Mmm Skyscraper I Love You, twelve minutes
of frantic crescendos, polirhythmic grooves, syncopated minimalisms,
sound effects and haunting melodic fragments.
What is unique about Underworld is that they conceive each piece, no matter
how long and no matter how intricate, as a "song", as a concept that tells
a story and has a melodic core.
The zenith of this "existential" dance music is reached with Dirty Epic.
From the very first notes, eerie sounds soar around a basic, steady beat.
Seconds after the singer has whispered the first few lines a pause yields to a
duet between a robotic voice and an organ drone. The bass church-like
drone continues to underpin the singing until the next break, when a
tempo shift brings in guitar riffs and synth fluttering while the singer's
part gains strength and acquires a more conventional funky-soul quality
(think Soft Cell).
It takes exactly ten minutes for the song to complete all of its mutations.
Even the simplest dance tracks (such as Surfboy, M.E.)
regurgitate a cornucopia of sonic diversions.
Among the light divertissments, Cowgirl is notable: the singer intones
a chant in the vein of Eurythmics over an
instistent minimalist figure and a very fat techno beat, and both sources of
rhythm keep growing as the song proceeds.
This album was a tour de force of dance production techniques. The following
album would be even more elegant, but this one would remain as a cornerstone in
the way inventive dance songs are produced.
The drum'n'bass mega-hit Born Slippy turned Underworld into a household
name (well, sort of), but was not fully representative of their artistic
mission.
Second Toughest In The Infants (Wax Trax, 1996) continued
Dubnobasswithmyheadman's experiment but focusing on the clubs.
The timbric elegance and tribal rhythm of Juanita (sixteen minutes)
exploit a pattern invented by Giorgio Moroder with From Here To Eternity,
and then wed it to frantic techno accelerations, to psychedelic melodic
chanting and to syncopated hip-hop interludes.
The subdued, melancholy tone of Banstyle leads Underworld into trip-hop
territory: minimalistic repetition of a bass keyboard pattern,
slippery soul singing, noises of nocturnal jungle,
undercurrents of reggae and blues guitar, reverbed dub beats, bossanova-style
mumbling, and jazzy drumming throughout.
As a ballad, it is a bold experiment: the instrumental parts are an order of
magnitude longer than the vocal parts, it mutates all the time,
and it lasts fifteen minutes.
It is Mike Oldfield's technique of linear collage applied to dance music.
After these two monster tracks, the album glides down to less ambitious music.
The liquid techno beats and trance-like murmuring in
Confusion The Waitress are immersed in the same trip-hop ambience.
The heavily distorted techno crescendo of Rowla
and the helicopter-like tribal beat Pearl's Girl
(ten minutes of mad tempo shifts) express pure edonism.
This album stands as more than a mere continuation of the pan-stylistic
program launched with Dubnobasswithmyheadman: it takes all those
ideas and, instead of expanding in all directions, it compresses them in
superbly crafted songs.
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Il gruppo registra anche sotto la sigla Lemon Interrupt (la bizzarra
Big Mouth e Dirty i primi singoli).
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Under the moniker Lemon Interrupt the group recorded the singles
Big Mouth and Dirty.
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The sound of Beaucoup Fish (V2, 1998) is the classic sound of
Underworld.
Cups is twelve minutes of sonic bliss: a mellow melodic theme
whispered by Hyde as if in trance, a brisk funky rhythm with exotic overtones
and floating electronic notes.
Aware of its dance-floor legacy, Underworld unleashes also three gargantuan
monsters of beats:
King Of Snake is a techno locomotive with a piano pulse reminescent
of Giorgio Moroder;
Kittens is a supersonic, tribal jungle spasm;
and Moaner closes the disc with a rumbling, pulsing maelstrom ripped
apart by savage distortions and devastated by a lunatic rant.
The heavily syncopated Push Upstairs and the hip-hop novelty
Bruce Lee are crowd pleasers, but also reaffirm Underworld as the most
unpredictable of the crowd pleasers.
Everything Everything (JBO, 2000) is a live album.
After a four-year hiatus, Underworld returned with
A Hundred Days Off (Junion Boys Own, 2002).
Three lengthy tracks (Two Months Off, Little Speaker,
Dinosaur Adventure 3D) straddle their classic progressive-dance
style (slowly developing themes that rely on seismic grooves), but the
shorter pieces are, at best, unfinished ideas.
Darren Emerson's collaboration with Tim Deluxe, Episode 1 (Thrive, 2002),
is a mix album. Emerson had already left Underworld.
After scoring two movie soundtracks, the Emerson-less Underworld released
Oblivion With Bells (2007), an album that delivers few innovations.
Hyde's vocals are more of a distraction than an attraction. So it is not
surprising that the best pieces are the ones that downplay the vocals, such as
the post-house stomp
Crocodile, the psychedelic ambient music of The Best Mamgu Ever,
and the instrumental Glam Bucket.
Hyde's best rap is probably Beautiful Burnout.
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