Underworld - Drift

ah, fuck this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixxG2DCeSX8

i thank you

think i'm happy enough with my Drift single disc best-of

Appleshine
This Must Be Drum Street
Listen To Their No
Border Country
Brussels
Doscientos
Schipol Test
Custard Speedtalk
Another Silent Way
Dune

https://underworldlive.com/events/
San Fran on May 15
LA on May 16
NYC on May 20
Detroit on May 23
Toronto on May 27

Seems like there's a new version of the box set forthcoming for the bargain price of £35

New DRIFT Series 1 – CD/DVD Boxset

DRIFT was released as a sampler and a super deluxe, seven-disc box set that sold out on release.

Responding to both demand and many people’s changed circumstances, the band have remodelled the package for a new compact edition that contains all of the original seven CDs and accompanying BluRay along with a perfect bound, 50-page book and a previously unreleased, hour-long recording of Rick Smith’s DRIFT pre-show set recorded live before Underworld’s show at Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on November 23rd 2019.

Had to go find that on the Facebook group just now cuz it looks like the store closed message is back up. The writeup also mentioned a new Underworld Bandcamp page. Currently empty. Wonder what they're cooking up. (Also fans of hard, hard takes will enjoy the past couple days of the Facebook group... lol)

Lol yeah - not many fans of Drift actually in that group

Just wild. I'm still beside myself that Drift happened. Single artist "communities" are always brutal I guess.

a UW bandcamp page is long long overdue

the bargain price of £35

Plus £9.46 shipping and £7 VAT.

https://underworld.bandcamp.com/album/ricksdubbedoutdriftexperience-live-in-amsterdam

Assuming all those girls names are off the Manchester Street Poem album?

And the bloke's name.

Full Rick set is now available as part of the original box set's download (it was missing a couple of tracks before today). I guess you have to re-download the entire massive zip file though!

https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/underworlds-drift-series-1-interview

Lolz:

Hyde: Can I say something? I don’t even know what song you’re talking about. Like, you would have to sing them to me and then I go, “Of course! I know every detail of that track.” But “Threat of Rain” now? Don’t know what it is. [Smith plays the track from his phone -ed.]. Oh, I was listening to that last night! I love that one. The way you did that hi-hat thing is amazing. Those reverbs they’re just…it’s so incredible. [back to interviewer] This is a constant problem. I have no idea what anyone’s talking about.

Also sounds like Series 2 is a definite go :)

Hyde: One day we’ll be able to encourage [session drummer extraordinaire] Steve Gadd to join the band.

to be fair Hyde is barely on that track

also it kinda speaks to how accomplished these dudes are? like, I remember the band pulled out "Dirty Epic" in like, 2010 or so, and someone noted that Karl was reading the lyrics off a piece of paper because he'd forgotten them! I mean, imagine writing so much great music that you can't even remember how "Dirty Epic" goes

Can I say something? I don’t even know what song you’re talking about.

ha ha, Karl OTM

relieves me to hear Karl himself has trouble remembering their music from the titles. even for some UW songs I love, it's taken me years to associate the music with the title

Two-part podcast "interview" with all the questions cut out: in part 1, they talk about how Drift came from a complete change in their relationship. For no apparent reason whatsoever, in Australia in 2017, Karl started listening to Rick for the first time ever, and that facilitated this more fluid way of working. (Karl also talks about how validating he found the process of publishing Drift - aside from their output not being mediated through the publicity/licensing machine, they'd also get immediate feedback not just from youtube comments, but also friends dropping a text to comment on the week's release.)

In part 2 they talk in broader terms about the role of the artist in society,their application of this, and not being a band.

MP3 links above, website here

the Sydney Opera House youtube channel has been releasing a lot of archive recordings (and new performances to empty rooms) during lockdown: here's a full version of Border Country from a few weeks before its Drift drop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1g_IIXnFsU

(other recent uploads of likely interest include full shows by Four Tet and Amon Tobin's ISAM 3D-mapped set, though the latter won't convey the full molar-shaking feel of being on the hollow wooden floor)

https://store.underworldlive.com/products/rez-live-at-reading-1996

Hope this link works - I removed a lot of bumph at the end in case sic gave me side eye.
New free download of Rez live at Reading

heads up that you can go through the checkout without creating an account, just putting a token character in each field.

oh damn it's THAT performance of Rez, awesome

hopefully a teaser for full show releases from the DAT archive, or other selected bangers for the next "in-between" Drift freebies. the video of Rick fiddling with the Arp isn't long enough!

Revisiting this tonight. Gratitude to the boys for such an enormous gift.

interesting... first new non-archival release since the Drift box, isn't it?

Halsey - I am not a woman, I'm a god (Underworld’s Drift Mix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Fjtbl5jEw

Let me be the first to say this is horrible. I actually have liked a couple Halsey songs, her SNL performance in particular was powerful. This remix is garbage though. Definitely cashing a check here. At least they didn't waste any good ideas on this remix.

it's certainly surprising

Hate the trend for remixes on major labels to be 3 minutes long when you suspect there are normal length versions that remain unreleased as they don’t bring in the quantity of streams

Are they working on Drift 2 ? They just sent out a mail with a free download of a new 10 minute Dark Train mix ("from the pigshed") called "Drift 2 Dark Train"

Released in the summer of 1994, one could argue that Dark Train was Underworld’s first proper anthem. Where previous singles Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You, Rez and Cowgirl had provided the soundtrack to countless nights in dank basements and underground clubs, Dark Train drove a hole directly through the walls and parked itself on the main dance floor. It quickly crossed from techno world and into the super clubs - those buttoned up, shiny new sonic meccas that sprang up all over the UK in the mid ’90s. Once there, it began to shape the sounds around it, an irrepressible, irresistible virus in the mainstream. Often imitated over the years, Dark Train was never equalled.

Ostensibly a remix of Dark & Long, in reality this was always very much its own thing. Completely reimagined from the original, it was an irrepressible groove, a signal to move and an instruction to ride the train with zero regard for the destination. Eighteen months after release and club ubiquity, the track gained a post-club afterlife in Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting. There, it formed part of an unforgettable juxtaposition in the film’s cold turkey scene - the claustrophobic, bedroom bound visuals offset by the relentless elation of the music.

This new mix of Dark Train builds on Underworld’s recent live performances of the track. For this exclusive release, Underworld have reimagined the original mix in the Pigshed as if it were being played out, and we were stood together in field or concert hall, riding that train together.

the soft launch continues lol. Mm this is nice

yeah I'm surprised we've heard basically nothing of them since Drift 1 finished but I assumed they were still doing...something

you know I listened to that Drift stuff so much in 2019 and the start of 2020 all of it is burned into my brain as the immediate pre-pandemic music. anyway numbers are down so time for 6 more albums I hope

As noted elsewhere, numbers yesterday were the second-highest of the entire pandemic, and have been rising consistently since June, bar one fortnight in summer. Hancock was fired in June for breaking distancing rules*, Jarvis announced Freedom Day for three weeks after that and promptly caught covid himself. TWO DAYS AGO he announced that mask-wearing would be a Plan B if things continue to get worse, and maybe MPs should do it anyway to set an example — only to be contradicted in Parliament by JRM, who claimed that you can’t spread the virus to people you know.

Numbers for 16th to 18th October are up 18% on the week before. What the fuck are people talking about on this board?! Karl and Rick are in the age group second-highest for hospitalisations! Cases in under-19s are literally the highest they’ve ever been. 1 in 63 people are actively symptomatic!

*by fucking an aide in his office, not for awarding her brother million-pound covid relief contracts, which he also did.

wow racist much, autocorrect

16th to 22nd October, that one was me.

look the pandemic started as soon as Drift 1 stopped so maybe Drift 2 can end it

i had the less controversial thought that Nov 1 will be the third anniversary of the start of the thing.

They really could have been churning out Drift At Home EPs of ambient Rick stuff for the last year

irl lol xps

they've never really sat still over the last 40 years so I'd imagine they've got *something* going on

i should remember this as i read the box's book and the episode 2 online notes and whatever else but...i don't get the feeling that very much (any?) of the Drift tracks were conceived, brand new, week to week. More that it was a massive clearing of the decks, fleshing out an existing idea or demo week to week. I imagine they've been building the stockpile back up.

and maybe finishing a few things in advance for Rick's sanity this time round

the thing about that there are like 2 dozen unreleased tracks that have been played live once or released as demos online or played on a random radio show and I don't think elements of any of them wound up here. the only real callback is the "Lenny Penne" beat in "S T A R"

idk if any of the tracks were just like "here's something we did yesterday" but I'd guess a ton of it was written after Episode 1 was started