Underworld - Classic or Dud?

The kickass house/blues romp "Big Mouth" (with some guy named Philadelphia Slim whom I've never heard of on harmonica!!) is another awesome underrated early Underworld song. Underworld kicks ass.

(I'm sorry I won't pimp out that article ever again, this is the millionth time, prob haven't written anything decent for free since, it was 18 months ago)

But I must ask: If Underworld's a dud, who's classic?

...Ball ist rund. Spiel dauert 90 Minuten. Soviel ist schon mal klar. Alles andere ist Theorie...

I love how each record they make gets more and more minimal, but it doesn't diminish the impact at all.

With the benefit of hindsight, Darren Emerson leaving seems to have been beneficial.

That said, they are one of my faves.

I think it would ride pretty high in my best of the 90s, FWIW. For all I know I might have bypassed electronic music almost entirely if not for that album and 'In Sides'

"Juanite/Kiteless/Confusion The Waitress" would pass muster if it wasn't 8,000 years long.

Mencap, me too! I owe it al to STITI. It's the record that got me into electronic music, house music, DANCE music even.

gem, is that comp really worth buying? Couldn't I just burn it myself? What's the appeal?

'Rez' was a rare example of a video making me dislike the track more (which i initially thought was ok, then liked a lot) as opposed to the other way round. still prefer 'Cowgirl' tho.

Heh, the last three on there especially just kind of go by in a nameless haze (bringing us back to roxy's point).

not if you have all of the originals of course. but i don't. so it was for me.

There is nothing in the songs "Blueski", "Stagger" and "Juanita" (for example) that sounds anything like anything in the other two.

partly i think the danceability of second toughest is subtle yet powerful- the repetitive figures of the "juanita/kiteless" opening block at first just make you bounce around a little bit, jiggle a leg in your seat or whatever, but by later you're humming along with the vocoder and it picks up speed. this is opposed to the danceability of, say, "push upstairs," which just starts bashing down the door and forcing you to dance with the detroit-ness of it all and builds even more on that.

neither is a better approach.

OTM OTM OTM OTM and incidentally this is why "Pearl's Girl" is the only track on the album that works.

_Second Toughest..._ comes across like they took the miniscule edge of _dubnobass..._ and sanded it off of every track, leaving a completely innoffensive and uninvolving puddle of bland (with the SOLE exception of "Pearl's Girl"); the entire reason why most of those songs work better in a live situation is because beefed up through a gigantic club system with all of the live filter processing and feedback inherent in the setup the tracks regain bite and crispness. I first heard most of the _Second Toughest..._ material live at one of their shows in support of the album and was DEEPLY LET DOWN by the faceless blancmange that they put in the stores, so I basically turned back to the drum n bass CDs that were piling up next to my stereo and wrote them off for YEARS.

My then-roommate in 1996 had friends over and were planning to see Underworld at a club down the street. I knew and liked “Thrash” from Sire’s Just Say Mao compilation and decided to tag along to check out the show.

I was not prepared.

lol I bet ... considering which album they were touring

The ticket website is f’ed up. It (and all of Underworld’s advertising) clearly implies there are two concerts, one on Thursday Sep 3 and the other on Friday, Sep 4. when I go to the website try to buy a Friday ticket (which is $10 more than Thursday) the ticket I got back says thursday. so I email their customer service and they tell me “no your ticket is for Thursday and there is no Friday concert”

I ask them why everything says Thursday and Friday and they explain, “that’s because the concert goes to midnight”.

that famous way we describe a single concert if it might go to midnight “oh hey I went to so-and-so’s show on thursday and friday”

I also bought tickets for the friday show. Emailed them about the same problem and this is what i got back…

We're sorry for the confusion here.
I’ve checked your tickets for the event Underworld Presents Crazy, Crazy, and I can confirm they are definitely for September 4th.
Because this is a two-day event, the app often displays the start date of the overall festival (September 3rd) on the main heading. However, your specific ticket type is valid for September 4th.

yes I finally cleared that up again after another round of emails with their support :/

it might've been all the painkillers i was on, but when i saw them for the first time last year (i've been a fan suns dubno) it was a transcendental experience.
a lot of strawberry hotel stuff also didn't properly register until i heard those tracks live, denver luna needs to be heard live

actually tried to buy a ticket using half a dozen different browsers on three different devices and never even got far enough to learn what the ticket price was

tight one-hour festival set from EDC last Friday — thrilling views of Rick’s patch label strips for each song, the “for2026” versions of Pearls & Kittens with the Boiler Room samples back in, opener is Born Slippy with Good Day Today sung over the top