Underworld - Drift

I just came up with this handful of favorites and tried to make the best sequence I could (I'll be impressed if they wind up putting anything that sounds like an album moreso than most of the episodes have)

universe of can when back
Brussels
pinetum
listen to their no
appleshine
another silent way
Toluca stars
border country

1hr. Would like to have a Necks thing included, hope there is another one with them.

surprised myself only having one from #3.. most days I'd say that's the best one

would've put on "Doris" but it's already on the Manchester Street Poem album that came out that week. Highly recommended for anyone here who hasn't checked that out!

I'm really hoping that there is a new track or two and that the whole thing is remixed heavily. nothing wrong with what we got just hoping for something different since I've listened to the Drift stuff so much already.

it's kind of hard to pare this down to an hour since so many of the tracks are 10+ minutes. not a lot of room for something like "Pinetum" or "Threat of Rain" (which I doubt would have made the album anyway, they don't usually put tracks like that on the LPs proper). I'm not sure if they're gonna aim for a album full of bangers or something more chill, or some combination of both. "Listen to Their No" & "Drum Street" were both played live so I assume they're both on the LP.

personally I'd do something like

Appleshine
Molehill
This Must Be Drum Street
Another Silent Way
Dexter's Chalk
Hundred Weight Hammer
Border Country
Custard Speedtalk
Tree and Two Chairs
Listen to Their No

that's about 75 minutes and it misses a few faves but it works

I would put "Mile Bush Pride" on there but I feel like we don't have the full version of that yet

good point about the two being played live. Going to play your list later!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VohOhpwbk3M

seems to be the last track from "Drift Series 1"

says "penultimate part of episode 5" so one more left? or does that refer to when they put it out as an EP

lol yeah my bad I forgot "penultimate" means there's one left

actually it's on YouTube now, it's called "S T A R" but you can't listen to it until 9/12

email: "Join us for the premiere of S T A R - the final part of DRIFT Episode 5 - Thursday 12th September 12.00 BST"

this week is the "penultimate part"

I figured this meant next week is the last song... but it's true that "star" could be just the name of the episode (it fits well with the other one word titles), with the full episode release to services as usual (and no new song, as usual). Also the email calls this week a "cliffhanger"!

who knows!

the specific premier time is a first?

some TV interface or other is apparently showing the Star video runtime as 3m45s.. and the description includes:

'S T A R' Lyrics LYRICS HERE - - - - - - - - - About 'S T A R' TRACK DESCRIPTION - - - - - - - - -

...

I'm gonna say it is a song!

This week's seems slight at first listen... the sort of new bit you might have heard as a bridge between big songs at a gig

most of the Ep 5 tracks seem that way. lotta jams without much structure. but I like those sorts of tracks

and yeah this does seem made to segue into something. it sounds like they're trying to build up some anticipation for next week's track so I'm pretty intrigued what it is now

CLIFFHANGER

Preview of the last track sounds awesome, I believe that’s the Lenny Penne beat

yup! and then something else and... tomorrow will be interesting.

Early today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdzeOJc67p8

it was right on the announced time!

I'd been thinking there was way more Karl than not, than they've typically had across their albums.

beware of this one then :)

it sounds like late-90s Underworld attempting to fake a late-90s Fatboy Slim single

Also, looks like they're now calling this whole thing Drift Series One and are going to start Series 2 once it concludes!

DRIFT Series 1 concludes on 1st November, marking 1 year since the start of the epic DRIFT journey of 52 releases in 52 weeks…

"Did any of us ever seriously think there wouldn’t be a DRIFT series 2…?" - Karl

"It’s madness isn’t it?... We’ll do this together until we’re dust" - Rick

Tracklist for the box set is noted as being provisional only, but each disc so far has two unreleased tracks.

Was just going to post.

DRIFT: Series 1 – Track Listings (Subject to Change):

Sampler Edition
Appleshine
This Must Be Drum Street
Listen To Their No
Border Country
Mile Bush Pride
Schiphol Test
Brilliant Yes That Would Be
S T A R (Rebel Tech)
Imagine A Box
Custard Speedtalk

Boxset

CD1 – Ep 1 DUST
Another Silent Way
Dexters Chalk
Low Between Zebras
Universe Of Can When Back
Brilliant Yes That Would Be
Another Silent Way / Drift Poem / Better Than Diamonds (previously unreleased)
One True Piano Need Hand (previously unreleased)

CD2 – Ep 2 ATOM
Appleshine
Molehill
Threat Of Rain
Brussels
Soniamode (Aditya Game)
Appleshiner (previously unreleased)
Roof Off (previously unreleased)

CD3 – Ep 3 HEART
Dune
Custard Speedtalk
This Must Be Drum Street
Pinetum
Poet Cat
Do Breakers Trip (previously unreleased)
Seven Music Drone (previously unreleased)

Wondering if Appleshiner is a shorter version of Appleshine Continuum?

the single disc album is now the "sampler edition" with the following tracklist:
Appleshine
This Must Be Drum Street
Listen To Their No
Border Country
Mile Bush Pride
Schiphol Test
Brilliant Yes That Would Be
S T A R (Rebel Tech)
Imagine A Box
Custard Speedtalk

it's also on iTunes too https://music.apple.com/au/album/drift-series-1-sampler-edition/1479687494 which notes that most of the tracks are remastered (not really surprising) but a lot of the track times are disappointingly shorter than the existing versions, which is strange since it's only an hour long as it is so i'd think there's room for them to have the full versions? weirdly it also includes "brilliant yes that would be" which was released a bit before they officially started drift (though a snippet of it was the intro to episode 1)

the boxset tracklisting isn't fully on that news post for some reason (only three CDs out of the seven) but they do seem to be editing the tracklists of each of the EPs a little in addition to the bonus tracks (not really a surprise that Appleshine Continuum will have its own disc i guess)

presumably that is wrt "appleshine continuum", though i guess they might throw in "a very silent way" on that disc since that was the other necks collab and isn't on the episode 1 disc, as well as other bonus tracks

there were only 6 CD's before...

still with the "52 weeks" so more to come with this series...

more serieses....

I'm dust

nice to see added emphasis on the project itself, with the album now titled as a "sampler". Whole thing to come to streaming services!

Dear Customer,

This is a notification to let you know that the release date of Drift Songs has been changed to 2019-11-01.

Kind Regards,
Underworld Store

before I noticed it came from a "noreply" thingy, I wanted to reply and say it was quite alright

xp yeah I'm glad to see that too, I didn't want this to be looked at like "here's the new album + a bunch of supplemental material", since I think all 5 of these EPs can stand on their own. would be a bit like Autechre coming out with a 1-disc version of NTS Sessions for the casuals. originally was a bit disappointed that the single disc was "just" a best-of but the extra material on all the other discs more than makes up for it

love the new track too, it's a bit gimmicky but UW have certainly earned it at this point

bring on 11-1

also of interest:

https://tower.jp/item/4930781

Japan version of the sampler is actually two discs, with disc 2 containing some of the more ambient/low key bits, + 2 tracks we haven't heard yet..."Do Breakers Trip" (listed as a bonus on EP3) and "A Moth at the Door"

looking over the track times on the iTunes sampler - several tracks are a bit shorter (particularly "Schiphol Test"), not really clear if these are "new" versions or just edits/fades. funny that "Mile Bush Pride", the one track I would hope would be expanded here, is actually cut down to 1:30

STAR is fun. The original is a highlight from Riverrun. I haven't played it in a while, but it sounds like Rick did quite a bit with it here as well.

many xp's to sic: nothing wrong with lots of Karl (what's really meant here is "vocals"), it just seemed unusual for them if this was all towards an album...I think that's evidenced by their inclusion of BYTWB on the "sampler".

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/underworld-drift-series-1-star-883355/?&cf=1

Google skills.

yup, a Necks disc, with a third track that's a take on Altitude Dub!

this revealed the name of the last episode, Game

dust
atom
heart
space
game

ok

I wonder if they just release some of the extra box tracks in the remaining weeks.. there's 11! if next week is episode 5 release, there's 5 left

Full tracklist. With all the unreleased tracks I think everything from the Ep 2 liner notes is covered.

CD1 - Ep 1 DUST
Another Silent Way
Dexters Chalk
Low Between Zebras
Universe Of Can When Back
Brilliant Yes That Would Be
Another Silent Way / Drift Poem / Better Than Diamonds (previously unreleased)
One True Piano Need Hand (previously unreleased)

CD2 - Ep 2 ATOM
Appleshine
Molehill
Threat Of Rain
Brussels
Soniamode (Aditya Game)
Appleshiner (previously unreleased)
Roof Off (previously unreleased)

CD3 - Ep 3 HEART
Dune
Custard Speedtalk
This Must Be Drum Street
Pinetum
Poet Cat
Do Breakers Trip (previously unreleased)
Seven Music Drone (previously unreleased)

CD4 - Ep 4 SPACE
Listen To Their No
Schiphol Test
Hundred Weight Hammer
Doris
Altitude Dub
Border Country
Big Bear (previously unreleased)

CD5 - Ep 5 GAME
Toluca Stars
Mile Bush Pride
Imagine A Box
Tree And Two Chairs
Give Me The Room
S T A R
Doscientos (previously unreleased)
Two Arrows (previously unreleased)
A Moth At The Door (previously unreleased)

CD6 - Underworld and The Necks
Appleshine Continuum
A Very Silent Way
Altitude Dub Continuum (previously unreleased)

so in the end it did wind up being 6 EPs. my guess is they really didn't know where all this was going so they reconfigured it to something that made a bit more sense.

I'm interested in how the Necks disc is going to be mixed. I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that the ending of "Appleshine Continuum" sort of leads into the "Very Silent Way" groove. would be incredible if it was all mixed together. "Altitude Dub" is a strange choice - would have expected "Table & Two Chairs There"

Enough material for 6 at least. I don't have high hopes for the extras... wouldn't they be kept for series 2 work if they were anything special? Or are they determined to start fresh?

It's interesting that the Sampler leans so heavily on later episodes. I wasn't a huge fan of #1, but I could see some of the old gang on the fan forum like it best. 2 and 3 I was all in on. 4 and 5 I'm enjoying... sort of felt like it was the B material to cap a crazy, long project (besides Border Country and a couple others). I'll spend some more time with them... but clearly they're the band's favourites and that surprised me. When the box comes, I'll be trying to read it as some sort of gradual evolution in their sound, that they seem to think was successful.

well UW's extras have always been pretty good but I kinda suspect that these may be early versions or riffs off the stuff they released. like how "Dark and Long" became 10 different pieces somehow.

I agree that the high point of the project was somewhere in the middle..."Appleshine Continuum" -> all the Episode 3 stuff -> "Listen to their No" & "Schiphol Test"...but that said I've liked the Ep 5 tracks a lot, I just haven't listened to them more than once or twice because I'm waiting for the actual EP. I am surprised that something like "Dexters Chalk" or "Another Silent Way" isn't on the sampler but maybe they felt it was banging enough as it was. It looks to me like they're backtracking a little bit on the idea of the "Drift Songs" album and instead are focusing on the project as a whole. Maybe they didn't expect this stuff to turn out as good as it did.

truetruetrue

about the 90s and the many "remixes"... a lot of these things were straight up new songs labeled as remixes on singles in order to get more material out and still be eligible to chart... at least that was what I heard around, back then. Many did share elements though so it's all blurred.

the mystery continues

if anything, they usually named them as straight up new songs on the singles and then later sort-of rebranded them as versions for clarity. given how improv-based they were in the Emerson era, it's probable that they thought of them / recorded them as completely different takes on the same ideas, rather than remixing one "finished" song.

It's interesting that the Sampler leans so heavily on later episodes

yeah, I'm guessing this is recency bias? or maybe they know sales on the later EPs are much lower once the album was announced, so they figure more ppl have heard the early tracks. be interesting to see if the shorter sampler versions are different mixes or just basic edits / fades.

Rebranded for clarity? Eh, like when?

it's hard to imagine them being too concerned with sales, but it's been funny how almost every single week has a different wrinkle to it. Download and YouTube, no streaming / streaming and YouTube only / just YouTube ... their people must have some interesting metrics, but i dunno if that would have influenced the tracklist

Rebranded for clarity? Eh, like when?

Born Slippy .NUXX retitled Born Slippy (Nuxx) or Born Slippy (Nuxx Mix) (or, for less clarity, just Born Slippy) on 8 million compilations

Dirty Guitar retitled Dirty Epic (Dirty Guitar Mix) on US releases

Dark Train retitled Dark & Long (Dark Train Mix) on foreign releases & the superdeluxe DubNob, Thing In A Book retitled Dark & Long (Thing In Book) or Dark & Long (Thing In A Book Mix) on foreign releases and the superdeluxe etc etc

Ep. 5 out last Thursday, been enjoying it a lot

some people on the fanboard have pointed out a few differences - most obviously is "Mile Bush Pride" which is cut down to 1:30, but there's also a replacement of the great jazzy keyboard line on "Tree and Two Chairs" and an off-beat delay on the vocals at the end of "S T A R". so make sure you keep your single tracks

makes me wonder what the EPs on the box set will sound like. I wouldn't be surprised if they made a bunch of tweaks to the entire thing, especially the early tracks

keep single tracks? Weren't some or all of those you mention YouTube-only? I'll maybe fuss about archiving YouTube rips after I see what is on the Bluray. Something like "Mile Bush Pride" might have a pretty simple visual, but I doubt they will just lop half of that off. I'm thinking the videos are the videos, whether or not they have the "(Film Edit)" tag.

Episode is very nice. The week-to-week might've been more underwhelming than the others, but I doubt I'll see it as the weakest once I get my head around the full series. It's funny when everything is introduced to you as a "single".

correction, only "Mile Bush Pride" was YouTube-only previously. Others were on streaming at least.

I think you could download some of them. I was able to get the original "Tree and Two Chairs" & "Mile Bush Pride"

editing "Mile Bush Pride" makes some sense to me since it feels like a bit of a scrap at the end, but I'm perplexed as to why they changed "Tree and Two Chairs" - it loses some of its depth. great track either way but the Film Edit is clearly better. luckily it's very easy to just swap 'em out, they're exactly the same length.

Wow that is a weird choice on Tree and Two Chairs... especially when it's the lead instrument around 9:05.

it does change the focus of the track somewhat. you may also notice the drums are turned up in the EP mix. maybe Rick wasn't happy with the keyboard line...felt it was too meandering or whatever. may be similar to why the version of "Twist" on AHDO doesn't have the guitar bit on it. it's a weird decision and one I don't really agree with but if you've got both versions it's hard to really complain

I think you could download some of them. I was able to get the original "Tree and Two Chairs" & "Mile Bush Pride"

from my records, Mile Bush Pride was the only one that had a freebie download, but all the others were available for purchase as singles from digital retailers. wonder if they deliberately did that with Mile Bush bcz they already knew it was going to be shorter on the EP.

I'm going to stop talking about the availability of anything, my files are a mess.

https://underworldlive.com/music/biro-the-leggy-romford-dub/

We're back in the archives today! An early version of Beautiful Burnout.

5 more Thursdays before the Friday, Nov 1 release

just listen to paul hardcastle - king tut m8.

Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams
Find your strength in the egyptology melodics
And make your transition into becoming a tyranical pharoah.

It's more that I just don't get the appeal. They had their 90s lager lout moments with the first album and born slippy - which I don't necessarily like but I can at least appreciate as a reflection of a particularly mid 90s British cultural moment. Now they just seem to be piggybacking over whichever populist trend will make them vaguely relevant, which is kind of sad and tryhard.

― toxic psycho "gifted child" asshole (RobbiePires), Sunday, 7 November 2021 23:07 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Can I please come and live in whichever universe you're in, where the delicious 11-minute spoken word beauty of 'Dune' is considered a populist trend.

As far as I'm aware the ritual backlash against trance hasn't happened though as one would expect it to. If anything, it's all over a lot of contemporary techno and house, see that Roza Terenzi album - sounds like a record which would have come out from the English prog superclub scene of the 90s.

― toxic psycho "gifted child" asshole (RobbiePires), Sunday, 7 November 2021 17:15 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the death of both the UK and Euro hardcore continuums, the gothification of industrial techno, lo fi house, the victory of tech house.

― toxic psycho "gifted child" asshole (RobbiePires), Monday, 8 November 2021 00:22 (three hours ago) link

the rehabilitation of new agey aesthetics, the turning away from degenerecy, filth, smut. airports rather than bunkers. no more friction.

― toxic psycho "gifted child" asshole (RobbiePires), Monday, 8 November 2021 00:24 (three hours ago) link

This feels like a convenient narrative folding in the last thirty years of dance music, which could make sense if one is applying a reynolds circa 1995 lens and not directly engaging with events on the ground and/or how sonics change meaning over time as the social context for them also changes.

In particular, I can see how for soapbox purposes it might be tempting to set up this oppositional narrative where trance and new agey aesthetics are opposed to degeneracy, filth and smut ("airports rather than bunkers") - but that rests on a bunch of unspoken assumptions regarding who is currently listening to trancey techno with new agey motifs, why, how, and what all those choices mean.

First, if we're gonna conflate Roza Terenzi with trance or prog-house revivalism (and why single out her? Bicep both make more sense and are a better stand-in for "mainstream" trends; Modern Love sounds more like B12's Time Tourist in truth), it's important to note that her scene is not really about reviving trance (or prog-house) per se but is rather stealing ideas from trance, techno, 2-step, electro, IDM and breakbeat (circa 1999).

That's hardly unprecedented or something that in broad terms wasn't happening in the 90s necessarily, but prog-house and trance went there only briefly and kind of by accident - the East Coast edition of Northern Exposure 2 is my standard reference point here, but even that's not a great fit; certainly we're not talking about Tripomatic Fairytales or An Accident In Paradise or Vorsprung Dyk Technik or Ima or even Northern Exposure 1. A more accurate but more boring comparison might be the Plank and End labels - although again that might well be accidental. Sonically, I tend to think the particular constellation of stylistic influences at least implies a certain exhaustion with house, which as a rhythmic template has been broadly dominant for the last 20 years or so.

None of which is to deny that on occasion artists within this scene play with more overtly trance signifiers, or that there isn't a lot of more (sometimes overlapping but most unrelated) straightforward 90s trance revivalism at the moment within hard techno scenes - though whether it's framed as a fashion thing (say, Charlotte de Witte remixing Age of Love) or as just people doing basically what they've always done (say, Chris Liebling) largely depends on the examples you point to.

What's the attraction of trance revivalism for people at the moment? IME it has been embraced most enthusiastically at clubs and parties that promote themselves as very queer, with a strong emphasis on trans and gender fluid audiences. They're typically very sex positive, costume heavy (craft-ish dress-ups somewhere between ravey and titillating) and druggy - a lot of ketamine, acid, nangs, pills and amyl. They're also often rudimentary / outdoorsy set-ups: bush doofs and illegal parties in parks and nature reserves rather than big clubs (what clubs I've heard this music in tend to the smaller side - and yes, often they're in basements). I read the new age / PLUR vibes as being in part about reviving the pageantry of nineties rave and in part because the utopianism of the music seems to chime in with the "we're making a future society" dreams (or more cynically, pretensions) of a lot of the audience. But a big part of it is probably just that trance is druggy, and in particular works well with ketamine.

I'm not going to make grand claims for any of the above - there's nothing terribly earth-shattering about young people taking drugs and trying to make their home-brand versions of Burning Man - but I'm dubious of attempts to project some binary of dance music which is middle-class/safe/white/sexless/funkless/commodified/ versus the edgy and exciting and sexy music of the intransigent working class youth or whatever - seems like it's a lot harder to make stick in 2021 than it was in 1995. (in any event: "proper hard techno, gabba, psychodelic acidic mayhem, industrial freakbeats, dub abstraction" - this just sounds like a DJ mix for an art gallery installation at this point, other than that I'm not convinced "industrial freakbeats" is a thing).

Not that any of this has that much to do with underworld, mind. But then you seem to be mashing together a whole bunch of only-tenuously-connected-or-reality-based propositions, so maybe that isn't really surprising.

their finest moment, darren emerson knew a thing or two about the funk.

Nothing else really like it in their discography.

― toxic psycho "gifted child" asshole (RobbiePires), Monday, 8 November 2021 00:43 (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Great track, sure, but isn't it kind of boring / tired / small-minded to just check for their one blatant martian tribute?

Does killfile still work on this thing?

I'm dubious of attempts to project some binary of dance music which is middle-class/safe/white/sexless/funkless/commodified/ versus the edgy and exciting and sexy music of the intransigent working class youth or whatever - seems like it's a lot harder to make stick in 2021 than it was in 1995. (in any event: "proper hard techno, gabba, psychodelic acidic mayhem, industrial freakbeats, dub abstraction" - this just sounds like a DJ mix for an art gallery installation at this point, other than that I'm not convinced "industrial freakbeats" is a thing).
― Tim F, Monday, 8 November 2021

ha. Industrial freakbeats was coined by DJ Kovert (of praxis fame) an area of hardcore I don't think you have ever had much interest in (so I can't take much credit for that one, I'm afraid.)

Again I don't have an issue with trance, my issue is with the pilfering of the most tired and stayed aspects of it, why not for instance reference old 150+ bpm german hardtrance, played by the likes of M Zone at all the big raves? or even if we're chiming in with the queer angle, Tony De Vit style big pianos/hoovers handbag and hard house? Must I remind you of your posts on dubstep vs UK funky in 06-07? Insofar as there is any sort of class dichotomy, it's about dilution rather than an opposition.

This could almost be a thread of its own: whether there is any contemporary dance music that is not apt to be described as insufferably middle class and conservative at this point.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 26 October 2021

I mean this might be completely true, but then cue hungry wives song, where do we go?

also nothing wrong with funklessness, but only and only if the music in question fully embraces it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuluJnFRE-0

It's possible you spend way more time thinking about trance than anyone else here.
― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Sunday, 7 November 2021

Perhaps. It has mystified me after I dropped 15 tabs of lsd one saturday evening completely in an alternate reality, whizz bang explosions, pyrotechnics, saddam hussain being skewered into a kebab, and yet, still, i couldn't enjoy it when the hosts put it on.

revisiting the drift sampler today. amazing how it's their best record since beaucoup fish and yet only hints at the brilliance of the overall project

my only real nitpick is that a lot of the tracks may have benefitted from a proper studio master...the hi-hats are too sharp and some of the tracks sound kinda thin. like listen to the loop in "Big Bear", it's almost like it was mastered for laptop speakers. though I guess if they'd taken the time to do all that it would've messed with the concept of the project. most of it does sound really good.

curious what they've been up to since this wrapped up. Karl made it sound like they were still in the midst of a big creative outburst but we've heard virtually nothing since the pandemic started.

still haven't listened properly to Drift

Beaucoup Fish was and will always be one of my favorite albums from the 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLDOLgxuii8