Underworld - Classic or Dud?

yup it do

the track in the announcement video sounds awesome...wonder what it is

really digging the new "Soniamode". sounds like a proper track now

https://youtu.be/D_c0cnV5hGk

so this pretty much confirms what that one interview I alluded to above said - it'll be 5 EPs plus a studio album, though I'm curious as to what exactly the album's gonna be...will it be a 'best of', or will the tracks be remixed, edited, smashed together? or could it be new stuff?

really digging the new "Soniamode". sounds like a proper track now

― frogbs, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 6:40 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm this rips

I'm curious as to what exactly the album's gonna be...will it be a 'best of', or will the tracks be remixed, edited, smashed together? or could it be new stuff?

DRIFT SONGS expands and enhances a selection of the recordings from the DRIFT Series since since it began in November 2018.

So I'm assuming some of the other tracks will get a treatment similar to what they've done with Soniamode.

DRIFT #4 starts on Thursday and if it's running for 12 months presume there'll also be at least a DRIFT #5 and probably #6

well its supposedly 7 discs which includes a Blu-ray & the album itself which suggests there will only be five, BUT they could probably spill 6 across 5 CDs, especially since they'll have to split up EP 2 anyway

yeah, I assume they're just going to fill the CDs, rather than breaking the arbitrary Drift "episodes" onto specific discs

This is on their FB page.

"nearly halfway through" !!!

We’re now nearly half way through our #DRIFT series. We really hope you’ve been enjoying listening and watching as much as we have had creating. We will be releasing a full album: DRIFT SONGS in October to the conclusion of the 52-week series:

great new track out, the one heard a bit last week when they had the video announcing a coming announcement!

No download? But it's on streaming services.

Funny thing about the nearly half way, yeah. Doesn't really make sense given the Oct 25 album release.. but it could mean there are 6 episodes rather than 5.

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

this is, of course, completely fucking killer

whoa, this is right up there with "Two Months Off"

though I think they might have recycled the "Skyscraper" bass line ;)

No download? But it's on streaming services.

Available on itunes: https://music.apple.com/us/album/listen-to-their-no-single/1463935549

and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Their-No-Underworld/dp/B07RXZPB6M/
(who also have the Aditya Soniamode: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RXXTTNJ/ )

IIRC the first track in Episode 3 was also purchase-only, no freebie?

As yes you're right - same as the start of episode 3. Not sure where I got my Dune MP3. Anyway I ordered the box :D

i like how they put it out early in the day - that was new. Had it on repeat driving to work!

yea I've probably listened to it a dozen times already. woke up with it stuck in my head. starting to get really jealous of everyone who gets to go to those shows, there are so many new tracks that would just be killer live

This thread gives me the impression that Underworld has, in the last four months or so, released approximately 138 hours of can't miss, best-they've-ever-done material.

i'm on record as someone who enjoys the AHDO/OWB/Barking albums to varying degrees but i think they're re-peaking w/BBWFASF and this project.

I couldn't even make it through Barbara Barbara but I love this new stuff.

yeah, BBWFASF did nothing for me

for me BBWFASF is just a bit below their DNBWMHM/STITI/BF peak

As good as their albums are one thing about UW is that they've always done excellent B-sides and one-offs. They have so many awesome tracks that they'll play once during a radio broadcast or live show and then shelve forever (or rework them into something totally different). They used to bundle single tracks on their website but I think a lot of them are gone now. So it's neat that with Drift they're just putting all this stuff out there for download. I've been waiting for them to do something like this for years.

all true.. I've caught up with the fandom and bootlegs a bit as a result of Drift. The guys on the fan board don't seem to know most of the Drift tracks at all!

"Pinetium" might be my favorite thing. I don't see it mentioned much

it was really cool seeing Karl and Darren Price play dubnobass in full at Primavera Sound in 2015. Didn't make me anticipate any future material much though. And,well, goddam!

I meant to say.. it's the in-between-episode things that seem to date back a ways. "are you rockstar" seemed to be simply released from the vault... whereas the "Drift Songs" if not brand new are at least new recordings

This thread gives me the impression that Underworld has, in the last four months or so, released approximately 138 hours of can't miss, best-they've-ever-done material.

it's not BEST they've ever done, that's silly. it's, like, second or third best they've ever done.

that'll be a fun discussion at year end

xxp I may be wrong but I've got the impression that the Drift tracks are (more or less) written/recorded new each week - although probably using lyrics/beats/melodies that Rick & Karl have accumulated over the years.

Soniamode sticks out as one that they say in their write-up has been kicking around a long time. Most appear to be pretty recent creations but I never got the impression it's been a one-song-per-week focus creatively.

that is, I get the idea they have the whole thing at least sketched out... not that they're meeting every Friday like, ok what now? :)

Oh yeah, I imagine they have a plan but some of the accompanying notes (especially to Brussels and Soniamode) seem to imply the tracks have only come together in the last few days.

Whatever, I still find it amazing that these guys who are into 30+ years together as a band are churning out new tracks every week that have an incredibly high hit to miss ratio. Long may it continue.

And as evidenced by the single version of Soniamode, a lot of these tracks are probably going to get polished up and be even better on the album.

yeah, hell i dunno. The text on the new track was sweet, "Two people helping each other forever..."

And yeah, while there might be a bassline or pattern reused here or there in the Drift stuff, it seems to be all material written and recorded between 2017 and, in one case, the week of release.

In between chapters they've dropped stuff from 1997 to 2018: things they've had on the web in like 96kbps before, one they've never released studio versions of before, one brand new track they used as an intro on the first commercial Drift, a 26-minute 2008 studio improv version of Pearls Girl, and so on.

(So far it's about 3 hours 45 of Drift, over an hour of additional material. Plus other bits only on Mixcloud, like this 1998 jam/rehearsal for Beaucoup Fish figuring out the live versions)

xpost!

some of the accompanying notes (especially to Brussels and Soniamode) seem to imply the tracks have only come together in the last few days.

I think they specify that when it happens because it's unusual, not that they're writing a piece a week. The Necks sessions were in early 2018, and they noted that some of those were riffing on pieces they'd already written/recorded for Drift.

Whatever, I still find it amazing that these guys who are into 30+ years together as a band are churning out new tracks every week that have an incredibly high hit to miss ratio.

40 years this year!

to track one piece via workflow we have info for:

Rick and Karl wrote and recorded Soniamode together on the 1st of April, 2015. It then sat untouched until...

per the sleevenotes to Drift, Rick was looking for a track to finish for that Thursday's release on Tuesday January 22nd, and dug up Soniamode.

On the Wednesday afternoon, he picked up Appleshine, and finished it at 6:45am for release a few hours later.

Having slept, he then started working on mixing the Necks version of Appleshine on the Friday, on which day Karl recorded a "new vocal" for another piece that hasn't been released yet.

Rick continued mixing Appleshine Continuum through the weekend, finishing it on Monday 28th.

On the Tuesday, Rick and the video bloke decided that Molehill would be the track to come out on Thursday. On the Wednesday, they rehearsed for a gig in Dubai, then Rick mixed Molehill & delivered for video at 2am. They rehearsed again on the Thursday, then packed up the gear to ship to Dubai on the Friday.

Rick wrote new material on Saturday 2nd Feb. On the Sunday he worked on a piece that hasn't come out yet, and then on the video for Threat Of Rain. He worked on the same unreleased piece on Monday morning, then finished the video version of Threat Of Rain at 2am Tuesday.

Later on Tuesday Feb 5th, Karl recorded new vocals for Soniamode.

They flew to Dubai on the Wednesday, played on Friday night, flew home on Saturday. Rick worked on the mix for the EP version of Threat Of Rain in his hotel room while we were listening to the free/youtube version.

Jetlagged on Sunday, Rick picked up another unreleased piece and Brussels on Monday 11th, then chose Brussels on the Tuesday and finished it before midnight on Wednesday.

On the Thursday, he finished mixing Appleshine Continuum.

On Saturday 16th, he worked on some Drift future planning and more on Soniamode.

On Monday the 18th, Karl wrote new words and recorded vocals for Soniamode and one of the above not-yet-released tracks. Rick mixed it for video and sent it to the video bloke at midnight.

On Tuesday the 19th, they started writing the Game version of Soniamode.

On Thursday Feb 21st, the Soniamode they finished 55 hours earlier was released.

Three months later, and 211 weeks after they started it, on Tuesday May 21st the single / Game version of Soniamode was released.

So there's rarely a plan even six days ahead, and the videos are frequently being made between 2am and the morning release. But they're absolutely not making a track per week!

ah that puts it all into context well, that the EPs are fairly spontaneous but the album will likely be a more polished compilation of the best of the all the material

cheers xp

Karl Hyde is now two years older than Leonard Cohen was when he wrote Closing Time.

that whipper-snapper Rick is 3 years younger than Karl

Whatever, I still find it amazing that these guys who are into 30+ years together as a band are churning out new tracks every week that have an incredibly high hit to miss ratio. Long may it continue.

lol it's them and....They Might be Giants

anyway if UW really wanna make this their best year ever they need to record and release one of these live shows, similar to the Tokyo 2005 album, I'm still in awe of how great that set was

This week's newie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Sobf9OW9g

(free download is back, too)

if you were waiting for Most Ospitible, Who Rings the Bell, and King of Snake to have a baby, this one belongs to you.

I like!

spoilers (??) if you care about that sort of thing

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/underworld/2019/concert-hall-sydney-opera-house-sydney-australia-391b993.html?fbclid=IwAR3FjZkfTztZ9z4Zu54foh_SEL-RKEDMihYrmjDKAUjxNih7dLLRtEZYp8k

assuming "Border Country" is some future track

reading through the Drift Episode 2 liner notes i noticed that Rick suddenly says "There was no Agata (Melt Banana) on that" while he and Karl are discussing the violin and sax players on "Appleshine" which i didn't quite understand what he meant by it, so i went digging and i found an interview from a few years ago where Karl mentions he has a side project collaborating with Melt-Banana in the works and he's a big fan of them so i'm thinking maybe some sort of Melt-Banana collab will show up in Drift at some point? Rick might have just been comparing their playing style as the opposite of Agata's but to me it sounds like it could imply they were working together recently? really would have no idea what an Underworld/Melt-Banana collab would sound like though

I went digging around to try and track which songs came out in what formats and which have different versions and so forth, and found that Darren Price had his own big mid-Drift-style archive cleanout in the months before Drift started:

Two remixes of Lenne Penne from RiverRun, that were never used:
https://soundcloud.com/dj-darren-price/underworld-lenne-penne-darren-price-acid-mix-unreleaded-2006
https://soundcloud.com/dj-darren-price/underworld-lenne-penne-darren-price-drums-remix

A mix of Deep Arch used in the Olympics opening ceremony but not included on the album:
https://soundcloud.com/dj-darren-price/underworld-deep-arch-darren-price-unreleased-mix

A mix of Dark & Long he did with High Contrast that only appeared on the Olympics album in cut-down form:
https://soundcloud.com/dj-darren-price/underworld-dark-long-unreleased-6m-28s-darren-price-high-contrast-remix

A mix of Cherry Pie that he and High Contrast did that was meant to be used during the athletes' march, but they marched too fast:
https://soundcloud.com/dj-darren-price/underworld-cherry-pie-darren-price-high-contrast-mix-unreleased

A first-draft mix he did of Twenty Three Blue off Barbara Barbara, that got shelved when the original got relegated to a bonus track in Japan
https://soundcloud.com/dj-darren-price/underworld-twenty-three-blue-darren-price-unreleased-mix-2015

aaaaaand a 2002 mash-up he did of the Nuxx vocals over a track on Carl Cox's label, of which he made two dubplates and gave one to Cox, so nobody else has played this since
https://soundcloud.com/dj-darren-price/underworld-born-slippy-darren-price-unreleased-dubplate-2002