Underworld - Classic or Dud?

No.

xp

Another Misterons mix today, up on both mixcloud and youtube, with new joints back next week:

The finishing touches are being put on Episode 5, Part 1 as this reaches you. Keep your eyes on your inbox next Thursday for your next serving of DRIFT straight out of Central Mexico…

that mix (called "Chillin at the Shed") is very much worth a half hour of your time

first context I've ever liked "Push Downstairs" in by the way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB6G7KgBX24

fuck yes

most of Episode 5 has been less whelming than the previous ones, but today's is 13 mins of gorgeous bleepy jazz noodling, with one of the best videos so far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG74FOPyijY

https://www.mixcloud.com/DarrenPrice/darren-price-todd-terje-bs-dubplate/?

couple of records arrived yesterday. dubnobass is one I've wanted to own on vinyl for like, 15 years. but before this recent reissue they were not only expensive ($60+) but very difficult to find. same place had Barbara Barbara for $14 so I had to go for it

https://i.imgur.com/yTR0ZzD.png

wanna get the full set but OWB & Barking are OOP and fetch pretty crazy prices on the secondary market

Nice! second toughest reissue shouldn't be hard to find? I bought and returned it... record one was the A side twice. That was a new one on me.

Barnes & Noble has it for $24 with free shipping so I guess I'll spring for that. its the shipping costs that really kill ya.

fun story behind the BF LP, I bought it off eBay in 2005, it didn't arrive for nearly 2 months and despite being listed as "Never Played" and in "Like New" condition the thing was full of fingerprints and very scratched up - it skips a bunch and "Push Upstairs" gets into a locked groove a minute in (kinda neat, actually). I left the dude negative feedback (something I pretty much never do but this guy deserved it) and he went absolutely berserk on me, sending me a bunch of emails that I won't share here due to an abundance of homophobic language. Amusing enough to nearly make up for the unplayable record. Figured "well, you can always frame it..."

eBay's returns situation has since improved :)

Dia de los Muertos makeup for Mexico City gig:

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

Quite like this. Bit of a Juanita vibe with Karl's vocoder style vocals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9bW0RpMU7o

i'm guessing they cut Appleshine Continuum on the boxset so they could fit all of the Necks collaborations into one disc but it's still such a shame they did

meh the full thing is out there. Real question is, is there a longer Altitude Continuum?? lol

some UK people have the box already. There's a download code that apparently includes the in between week things.... but it doesn't yet work,lol. it would be great if the 64kbps mixcloud stuff is there in higher quality

oh wow that would be something

haven't given the new mix of Appleshine Continuum much time yet but my impression is they cut off the beginning part, which is basically just all of Appleshine again? this one seems to start where the Necks really take over

easy to swap 'em out on your own playlist but I like the mixing on the new one a lot more - more balanced, not as sharp & piercing

wonder if the audio on the Blu-ray got a once over. that would fix that up

Underworld turned into a lounge act so gradually that I hardly noticed.

Karl was always the singer in Freur [...] but the obvious reason he's not singing there is that he is English

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Tuesday, June 18, 2019 7:05 PM (five months ago)

yep:

https://i.imgur.com/ZW2Vupk.jpg

is that from "I Am Dogboy"?

yep ii!

got the box set too (numbered and signed, even, nice) - download code no worky, confirmed

the fingerprints of Karl's brief solo excursion (plus the albums with Eno) are all over this thing. "Do Breakers Trip" could've easily been on High Life. not to mention the live drumming which I believe UW had never really done before?

downloads are live I hear...mixcloud things are included, in hi res even

and I found the Dogboy book for $25 Canadian, shipped :D

I misremembered that as just being reprints of his web diary. Thanks for paying that shot, sic

posting*

The back cover says it is all reprints from his web diary! It’s a mixture of photos, poems, word sketches, little lists of recommended songs that correspond to or resonate with times in his life, and big solid chunks of mostly-chronological memoir. I’m 225/300pp in, and he’s living at Paisley Park as a session musician in 1990, two international record contracts down & a decade into his recording career, ringing with desperation from never feeling like he’s made music he was satisfied with.
(Apart from Doot Doot.)

Something I’d probably read but forgotten: the Underneath The Radar album (which I looooooved as a kid) was recorded live, and touring America they played it in full each night & then handed that on tape to the audience. How many of these survived?!

Something I might have read here but can’t search on Zing: the entire Change The Weather album was fully written & demoed by Rick on his computer; everyone who heard it thought the Rick electronics + Karl’s vocals & gtr version was great & should be released like that, but Karl threw inauthenticity tantrums until Rick replaced himself with musicians playing rock instruments. Let’s hear THAT deluxe reissue!

(Also, despite him feeling he’s failed himself with every different record & tour & phase in ludicrous stage/everyday clobber & change in lineups & band names, he essentially treats the continuity from 1979 as one band that he and Rick are in together. Prior to that the groups are all separate, back to him playing professionally in cover & dance bands through high school. The Screen Gems split after Rick joins then quits. By the time Karl plays his Doot Doot demo before hours at the diner they both work in, Rick & Alfie have a new band they cautiously allow Karl to join if he’ll only make music as experimental & free as this, no more fucken power pop. From there everything is either working with Rick, or other stuff.])

ha. I'll have to go back to those very first albums as I read.

Did he do memoirs on the web? I had the idea the book was just like the "diary" page on underworldlive.com these days.. like a photo of some gum on the ground and a few words from an overhead conversation, lol. Not that I don't enjoy that from time to time.

I recommend Karl's 4 radio shows for Double J in Australia last month, some pretty funny tangents about music in his life which mostly boil down to listening to music with his dad in the car and really liking spangly clothes

selections weren't bad either

Something I might have read here but can’t search on Zing: the entire Change The Weather album was fully written & demoed by Rick on his computer; everyone who heard it thought the Rick electronics + Karl’s vocals & gtr version was great & should be released like that, but Karl threw inauthenticity tantrums until Rick replaced himself with musicians playing rock instruments. Let’s hear THAT deluxe reissue!

lol those two albums are basically Underworld's Kraftwerk 1 & 2

I recall both Freur albums getting re-released on CD but they didn't do anything to improve the quite horrible mastering on Get Us Out Of Here, which is a shame because that is one seriously hooky album

An earlier funny thing in that vein: an unnamed New York producer/DJ wanted to remix Shokk The Doctor (b-side of Glory! Glory!, I've just looked up) for clubs. Management and Rick and Alfie all thought this was a great idea, but Karl was so horrified that they might be mistaken for a dance act that he agreed to a meeting with the producer in London and then gave him a lecture about the purity of funk-synth-rock.

(They auditioned for Sire by playing live in a room for Seymour Stein, pressing eject on the tape they'd made of the set, and saying "here's our demo, hope you like it." :D )

those radio shows in full btw - recorded back in June, so there's at least one would-have-been Drift premiere. Four shows themed on the same principles as their WOUW playlists: Balaeric, Groovers, Big Room Bangers and Ambichill, eight and a half hours all up.


Did he do memoirs on the web?

No idea, but on a pure guess + differences in style, I'd figure some of the sub-1-page pieces started on the web as little memory slices, longer chunks were written or expanded for the book.

utter nutter

realised that 3 of the 4 radio shows are no longer streaming: check Leo on 77

Did he do memoirs on the web? I had the idea the book was just like the "diary" page on underworldlive.com these days.. like a photo of some gum on the ground and a few words from an overhead conversation, lol. Not that I don't enjoy that from time to time.

There are lots of bits like the latter but there's also a fair chunk of memoirs, eg this stretch of entries in August 2013:

https://karlhyde.underworldlive.com/2013/08/17/saturday-17th-august/

this is really good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_B-2i_2Hc4&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2_oTdPXbFpJ65rswMVk4Hy9-AXi3E_Y_m1jTe_3dy4FikQjIJbSGKpRuc

I remember hearing JAL To Tokyo was demoed before its release but I never knew it sounded this different

Mega Mega Vote Thing - UNDERWORLD (Smith/Hyde) in ILM Artist Poll #102 - Campaigning, Discussion, Equivocating until 22nd May

^ four days left!

4 days is not enough time to listen to their discography, I report this from recent personal experience.

I'm 17 and have been brought up listening I this music and I wish I lived in the 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lt9c4qm_G0

_I'm 17 and have been brought up listening I this music and I wish I lived in the 90s_


📹

Three-minute acoustic guitar instrumental from Karl on instagram yesterday.

Karl is doing a reddit AMA later today

https://www.reddit.com/r/electronicmusic/comments/iumrkd/official_ama_with_karl_hyde_from_underworld/

Great AMA, just full of nice Karl vibes

Yeah it was funny to see a lotta people ask about reissues and live shows and such, if you know Karl and you want a response ask him about a guitar or someone he once collaborated with 30 years ago

We should've gotten to the bottom of the supposed Glastonbury 91 gig!

I didn't bother posting after I saw there were already questions about more Drift (yes) and doing a new "cover" of "Doot Doot" (no answer).

Favourite detail was that he's obsessed with the app for https://radio.garden

his responses around live improv were interesting. "Around 2000 audiences changed" (???) but when asked if they'd do that kind of thing again, "This is something that we have been talking about for a while and though it's largely not appropriate for most of te events we play it certainly something we have discussed, exploring alternative types of shows..."

5-days-only limited edition collection of Rez merch, I think today might be the last day

https://store.underworldlive.com/collections/rez-limited-drop?_ga=2.36754534.791663222.1605926487-292505261.1605926487

One of the items "for sale" is a free MP3 download of "Rez" live at Reading Festival in 1996, they also put it on YouTube and it is..... beyond incredible, like one of my new favorite Underworld things of all time, hoooooly cow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YLOxbKwPVo

yeah, it's the version that's at the end of Bootleg Babies, the fan made alternative to the official Everything Everything live album.

blew my mind when I heard it there too

if you like that be sure and seek out "European Club Gig" from 1996. simply one of the best gigs ever by any band