Underworld - Classic or Dud?

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.

AHDO has a ton of remixes, some hard to find, and there were a few nice live shows, some featuring some nice guitar playing on Twist (I believe). I wouldn't be sad with a live show on disc 2. Whatever show has that fucking annoying Italian radio announcer interrupting the tracks would be great.

another mix, including an unreleased track ("TT", which I actually do remember being on a radio show or something)

https://www.mixcloud.com/UnderworldLive/the-misterons-wouw-bella-malinconia-mix/

Lol

"More like yoga music! Did not like at all - give me Rez every time- sorry!"

New Drift has started today

https://youtu.be/JIHB72AwpHI

didn't they preview this one last year? would be awesome if Drift included some of those obscure tracks they'd randomly drop in exactly one live performance or radio broadcast

like this track a lot, feels like an STITI-era thing

"The intro of the track was originally published online when Underworld headlined the BBC Biggest Weekend in Belfast last year"

hah, didn't read that. I wonder who wrote it, because "an ambient coda reminiscent of Rez" does not strike me as the way R&K would describe their music

Glad they're doing proper downloads now.

just came here to say if you havne't heard the 3-disc Live in Tokyo 25th November 2005 album yet you are missing the fuck out, it blows Everything Everything to smithereens and is chock full of b-sides/unreleased shit

Disc one
"Dinner at Rods/JAL to Tokyo" – 9:03
"Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You" – 5:58
"Kittens" – 9:06
"Moroccan Meatballs" – 2:44 (Darren Price)
"Juanita" – 12:05
"Spikee" – 5:27
"Rez" – 9:28
Disc two
"Simple Distinctive" – 3:37
"Born Slippy .NUXX 2003" – 14:11
"Two Months Off" – 9:42
"Aquafunk/Flatz" – 4:35 (Aquafunk by Darren Price)
"Peggy Sussed" – 2:29
"Lenny Penne" – 5:38
"Small Conker and a Twix" – 2:26
"You Do Scribble" – 7:30
"Back in the Fears/Unknown Song" – 11:39
Disc three
"King of Snake" – 10:31
"Pearl's Girl" – 3:56
"Push Upstairs" – 5:49
"Dark Train" – 9:36
"Yard Beat" – 5:11 (Darren Price)
"Jumbo" – 9:20
"Witness/Rowla" – 9:28
"Moaner" – 9:44

I've got a spare Live In Tokyo to sell/trade if anybody has any good New Order/Underworld/St Etienne/ rarities to swap

that 20 minute stretch from "You Do Scribble" to the extended "Back in the Fears" + whatever came after it still absolutely kills. the whole set is amazing - it's almost a let down when it turns into a greatest hits set on Disc 3!!

btw there's a new track today - really gorgeous, though it must be said it does not sound like Underworld at all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkeo0Zjb6Nc

this must be their longest track in a while. reminds me of something off the Pearls Girl EP

https://www.borndirty.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18540

interesting tidbit here

https://sonar.es/en/2019/artists/underworld

Their latest project, Drift, is a self defined “journey without a fixed destination” consisting of 5 EP’s (and possibly an album)

so that's about 2 1/2 hours of material? very nice.

Next Drift track:

David Bowie’s LOW was the first record that made me realise that a singer can stand at the back as well as the front of the band. Rick was ahead of me in his vision for the dubnobasswithmyheadman album and he’s done it again with Brussels.

Twenty-four hours before this release it was one of a pile of unfinished pieces ‘not’ scheduled to come out. Simon Taylor filmed his route home that evening as he travelled down the motorway - some of this footage inevitably found its way into the conversation.

Working back and forth with sound and image is how we're developing the DRIFT Series, Rick weaving and stitching grooves, melody and words together; drawing parts from disparate songs to create a piece of music that shocked me. Twenty four hours ago, this journey through the edge of night didn't exist.

- Karl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHs5H_rWmEA

man I should start listenign to this Drift shit

FIVE EP'S?! Awesome. Most tracks have been stellar... we're not even half through? Aaaa

another collab with The Necks. it's 47 minutes long. and it's really good. a lot more going on than the other collab they did on Drift EP 1. the middle kinda reminds me of the Beastie Boys jamming out in the mid-90s

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

that is fantastic. i need to start keeping up with these

ok i'm listening to drift 1 rn and this is fantastic

i love feeling like i made the right decision being an underworld fan

i'll get back to y'all when i can describe music as anything other than "fantastic"

I keep forgetting until this pops up here every week... fantastic!!

woah this isn't even "out"yet.. where you get the YouTube link?

that was a fantastic voyage

frogbs, that was next week's track! Seen on borndirty forum eh?

This week's song looks like it's about to go up at underworldlive.com. it's on YouTube at https://youtu.be/KeS--IvjrYQ

yep - looks like it's gone now. I was wondering what happened to "part 5" but I figured I miscounted them.

good track but, I dunno. kinda pales in comparison. funny to see Rick just straight up write, "this one's not finished". something really great could come out of it.

so is Drift Ep 2 gonna be over 80 minutes? that's pretty awesome.

around 84 it seems.

thanks for posting the Necks track... looking forward to hearing it again, in a week?!

That 47 minute track is wonderful