Underworld - Classic or Dud?

Possibly uncool but I adore this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id2HezdNF2k

Louisiana is a great song! It's uncool to not like it. See also the UW remix of William's Last Words by Manic Street Preachers, which for me captures a similarly reflective / somber tone.

btw I think I say this every year in this thread but the UW release with a title that starts with "I'm a Big Sister" is an incredibly brilliant ambient EP (it's about 30 minutes long) that I think stacks up with any classic UW deep cut you could name

I wanna complain it's overlooked but they just released it on their own webstore and I think you can't get it anymore, so it's sort of their own fault

wish they'd just open up a Bandcamp already

otm about i'm a big sister, it's one of the best things they've ever done

^^^ Who is that voice doing the I'm a Big Sister thing, by the way? it sounds like Simon Armitage.

I think I've finally figured out why I'm not a big underworld fan, since i think the new track with iggy pop is fucking great till karl hyde opens his mouth.

finally listening to the iggy pop track, it's... wonderful??? pop just kinda sounds like a sample

wow, this goes hard. sounds like they've turned back the clock about 20 years

― frogbs, Wednesday, May 30, 2018 6:50 AM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yeah i was like "when was the last time they made something this pulsing and driving"

NO MORE ROCK CRITICS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjDbyewmOK4

collaborative ep with iggy pop, teatime dub encounters, out today

haven't heard the whole thing yet but "trapped" seems to rule

I like the two songs I've heard thus far, definitely will be grabbin' this

Hahahaha this is bananas

#Suicide

at least it's bound to be better than Lulu.

hahahahahaha
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/underworld-iggy-pop-teatime-dub-encounters-ep/

good driving in the car music, just kind of half-listen to iggy's old manisms and nod your head to the music

that p4k review seems to miss the point. It didn't come across to me that you're supposed to like...identify with Iggy here

I enjoyed this more than I would have expected. Didn't really care much for most recent Underworld, did kind of enjoy that Iggy Pop album from a couple of years ago.

It's fun to listen to Iggy Pop talk, what he actually says doesn't really matter that much. The straightforward beats on this complement his voice very nicely.

Regarding that pitchfork review: I guess Underworld and Iggy Pop could have gone for something for "significant" or "important" with this (which sometimes feels like the only way for someone older like Iggy Pop to be reviewed positively) but I really liked the tossed off feel of this.

yeah it feels very tossed off but that's the charm imo!

like sure, it's a 4.7, fine, but that's not the point

for some reason I pictured Iggy as having less old rockstar-isms, but the way he delivers them makes some tracks seem like hymns of resignation

I actually kind of love this. UW sound ageless here, you can tell right away who you're listening to with those chord changes and driving beats. meanwhile while Iggy sounds like he's 150 years old. don't mind the vocals much though they do kind of ruin "I'll See Big", which would be cool to have in instrumental form. but he's mostly good. "Get Your Shirt" been in my head all week.

btw Iggy sounding a bit like David Liebe Hart these days

new track, it's an odd little thing, what are they up to?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qDwIDPNdE0

They're up to some interesting stuff on paper, but this song is complete shite. Karl's vocals are awful, as they have been lately. Rick needs to edit him more aggressively. The music is also laughably retro / trying to recapture what made them special in 1996, but ends up sounding like a parody / weak version of UW circa 95/96. I just want to hear Rick make ambient albums and let Karl go do paintings. His painting is miles better than his lyrics at this stage in his career.

where did you hear these vicious things? There are always these rumours about them shagging off. Around the London olympics there was this noise about "Underworld" continuing as some loose collective of artists.

I love this track. A relief after that Iggy EP. Like most of their short edits (this is "Another Silent Way (Film Edit)", it feels a bit rushed. Looking forward to the full thing.

I like this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FuwaHe6lnI

yeah I've liked 'em both

hope this leads to a new album, or at least a tangible collection of all these tracks. 10 years ago they used to sell these little bundles of tracks on their webshop and there were a lot of gems ("Phonestrap", "Swing Up High", etc.)...hopefully this is something like that?

with the Necks!

http://thequietus.com/articles/25744-underworld-the-necks-improv-collaboration

cool but uh where's the rest of it

look,

from the email

"Drift Episode 1 concludes on 6 December when all of the published parts 1 to 5 are fused and released in a new extended form."

gotta say I'm curious as to how they are going to fuse these 5 very different sounding tracks together but I hope they aren't kidding about the "extended" part cuz they all feel like they should be longer

Fingers crossed it's something like the RiverRun releases and so ends up around 30 minutes long

https://underworldlive.com/drift/

It is, indeed, 30 minutes long.

https://underworldlive.com/music/the-misterons-wouw-mix-13-12-18/

DRIFT Episode 2 starts in mid January… In the meantime.. this week here’s a little Christmas something… this is what happens when The Misterons grab some tinsel antlers and mix up a couple of The World Of Underworld playlists….” Rick Smith

found a d/l link, which is nice b/c this is very good. been a looong time since I've heard the Winjer mix of Cowgirl

https://www.mediafire.com/file/lp3ca9q1cliafc7/The_Misterons_WOUW_Mix_13-12-18-eyCkkURIp4k.m4a/file

Great mix, especially Little Speaker into Cool Kids of Death.

really great and exciting

love the new EP by the way. Universe of Can When Back/Dexter's Chalk/Another Silent Way is the hardest they've gone in a long time....feels like a certain stretch on Beacoup Fish.

Ooh:

https://www.mixcloud.com/UnderworldLive/romford-1998-live-rehearsal/

and another thing

https://www.mixcloud.com/UnderworldLive/coming-out-of-texas-desert-demos-workings/

PH = Phonestrap and I think there are a few other familiar bits here

love that they're putting this stuff out there but I really wish they'd make it downloadable. or even better yet, open up a Bandcamp. there's a ton of stuff in the vaults and I think a lot of people would pay for these things.

Yes; if you use a downloader, these demos turn out to be around 56 kbps

yeah it kinda reminds me of the time when artists would get all hyped up about releasing stuff online but they'd wind up doing it as a bunch of 128 kbps MP3s. I'm not sure what they're thinking here exactly.

I remember the big Radiohead "In Rainbows" release being 160kbps and Jonny Greenwood making fun of audiophiles when asked about it. in all the "pay what you want" hoopla in the press it wasn't really mentioned. Of course that was over a decade ago.

Anyways.. no idea what's up here. even the big super deluxe album reissues they do don't dig quite this deep.

I'm wondering how feasible would it be to release lots of stuff like this and charge for it. Springsteen puts loads of concerts up for sale. But even for an artist that popular, are they really moving many?

Amazing that the only person who really got it was....Trent Reznor

tbh I have no idea how much certain things would sell - Bandcamp numbers always surprise me one way or another. Maybe they don't want this stuff to be part of their "official" catalogue, which is why they don't let people download it. I can understand an artist putting something rough out there and then wanting to pull it. But in our current reality, people are just gonna download it anyway and it's going to sound awful. So who knows what to do.

the "riverrun" EPs feel "unofficial" enough given that you can't buy them anywhere right now, and the best we have those in is I think 192kbps MP3. Real shame on those... Outside of Barbara I think those contain a lot of their best work this century.

if they came out now they'd probably get mashed into their album discography. Album/EP/mixtape/playlist/who cares. I used to hesitate including an EP on, for example, an end of year album list. It's all fair game now.

Weird as this mixcloud miscallaney rollout is (with the fancy blog write-ups and track lists and everything), I'm glad to hear it all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and more "Drift" soon! Good to see the eventual Part 1 EP (or is it "Episode"?) got a wide release (streaming and download services)

another thing, this is pretty nice. I am pretty sure a couple people on the fan boards made the same thing long ago though.

https://www.mixcloud.com/UnderworldLive/the-misterons-rowlacherry-mash-up/

had no idea the Riverrun stuff was unavailable...I thought they were pretty great too (especially the last one) but not breaking them down into separate tracks was probably a bad decision. it's gonna be interesting to see what will happen if they continue making those deluxe remasters - I don't think AHDO has a whole lot of supplemental material, but OWB has a ton, including all three of those. But I don't see them just skipping an album. Who knows.