why don't you poll me I feel like flying to... the UNDERWORLD Poll Results thread -- produced by Smith & Hyde for ILM Artist Poll #102

also confirm or deny that they exported the piano from this track onto "best mamgu ever"

frogbs: Makes me think of 2002 b-side "Headset".

i somehow spaced on the long Farm Coat til this morning. Beauty. I'd only known the 8-minute "short excerpt" all this time :)

yeah sounds the same as the Mamgu piano to me

oh yeah I forgot about that one entirely

also reminds me of Freur's "Alabaster White Thing"

Yes. I'm now hearing that for the first time. Neat.

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u091-643921.png

91. This Must Be Drum Street
174 points, 6 votes
2019 free-to-mailing-list mp3 as part of Drift

video
album remix audio

honestly "Do you wanna buy my car?" is one of my favorite Karl lyrics

one of the catchiest drift tracks

this kicks so much ass

― BradNelson, Monday, April 15, 2019 5:02 AM

this would be a nice one to stretch out to 12+ minutes

― frogbs, Tuesday, April 16, 2019 1:16 AM

https://i.imgur.com/B2k0l3h.jpg

Now they can also do techno pop music? Oh my God !!!

i quite like this, it's simple but catchy. Love hearing Rick's voice reciting random(?) words when we'd expect Karl. Speaking of, Karl's two lines are so dreamily produced, they become like a calming mantra...especially if one puts the track on repeat as i did yesterday and today for commutes!

everything starting to feel 'too low' already lol. Love this one. Had it at #49

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u090-140108.png

90. Minneapolis
178 points, 5 votes inc one for ...Airwaves
1992 12" AA1 and AA2 by Lemon Interupt

audio
Minneapolis Airwaves audio

I'm not sure why I hadn't heard this before

Omg that graphic.

i thought i listened to pretty much everything but apparently i missed sooo muuuuch!!!

audience video 2014

- First, just saying... But why the name Minneapolis

-- because the song is named after minneapolis.

- Chanhassen is not Minneapolis by any stretch of the imagination

-- they name a lot of songs after places. why not?

- Jesus this isn't an act of war I was just curious the back story.

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

Underworld have a handful of incredible tracks they've played live but not released. I'm not sure of other bands who still work on ideas while on stage in front of 10K-20K fans. They did a version of Ring Road on one of their live broadcasts where they used Minneapolis as the backing track. Worked out great.

― brotherlovesdub, Tuesday, October 20, 2009 3:59

audience video 2017 with Ring Road lyrics

things I've learned so far in this poll:

1. Underneath the Radar was way more popular than I ever imagined. wondering what the most covered Underworld song is now, and where that stands in the ranking.
2. I slept on the Drift videos, they're really well done. apparently I have hours of watching to do.
3. need more live mashups after watching Ring Road + Minneapolis.

Think there's a few obvious (and fairly horrible) trance covers of Born Slippy so at least this one tries something different

Ha, Born Slippy as Cornflake Girl. I don't hate it!

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u089-220311.png

89. Phonestrap 6 / Autotrader 4
182 points, 3 votes inc Will voting for one of each title
2008 track from digital EP Phonestrap

audio (8 min)
full EP audio (18 min)

So muß sich Musik anhören

nice trip! i love them

good sound )

that whole phonestrap series was such a lovely surprise! a nice little tune playing telephone with itself into weird spaceworld

if i'm following the telephone game going on in here, i think Karl sold his car to someone in Minneapolis using Autotrader?

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u088-284165.png

88. And I Will Kiss
186 points, 3 votes
2012 Olympics opening ceremony segment, feat. Dame Evelyn Glennie and The Pandemonium Drummers, released on Isles Of Wonder

Opening Ceremony "Pandemonium" video 2012

Opening Ceremony 'Pandemonium' video 2012

I cannot put into words how good this was. The actors were outstanding, the music was perfect and how creative you got to be to put this all together that only a absolute genius can do. Love this man front row with tears in his eyes and how proud he is 15:53. Will always remember this for the rest of my life.

I was lucky enough to be one of those on stage, hauling sections of turf in the industrial revolution - it was the best, most memorable and moving night ever! So very proud to have been (a very small) part of it

One of the greatest moments in the televised history of the world! A masterpiece.

This song simultaneously inspires me and makes me think I’m wasting my life.

I was lucky enough to be there that night and will take to my grave the pride to be British and the emotion this piece brought to the stadium. Seven years later I marched on Parliament, so ashamed am I of the mess made of this most divided country by those driven by self interest and introspection

I hit a big dislike because i had to watch this because of school

audience video 2018

tsk - audience video 2018

Forgot about that Ring Road/Minneapolis mash up, that's so good. is my mind playing tricks on me or did they do that during a radio broadcast once?

glad Phonestrap got a few votes, always been a fan of that one

It was bld's quoted reference to a broadcast version in the '00s that set me finding that 2017 one!

I can only assume that And I Will Kiss scored three votes because nearly everyone hadn't heard it, btw. Rick being hospitalised at the end of the ceremony was probably at least 50% just having written this, months earlier, catching up with him.

wow yeah I don't think I've heard this one

http://ghostfood.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u086a-617443.png

86= The First Note Is Silent
189 points, 3 votes
2011 12" by High Contrast featuring Tiësto & Underworld ‎

promo video (directed, shot and edited by High Contrast}
audience video (High Contrast dropping the acetate .wav a month before release)

Good to see Olympic music place. Loved the ceremony and played the soundtrack album a bunch at the time. But I findb the ceremony music hard to go back to now. It's some strange mental gymnastics trying to sort out where that belongs in relation to Dirty Epic... so I Did Not Finish.

First Note comments:

it's like a glimpse of a parallel universe where Underworld were a Chart EDM/D&B group of the early 2010s

Sure 90% will find it unbearably cheesy, but afraid I love it without reservations - the backwards string sample at 1:41 is the money shot here btw.

― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Sunday, May 10, 2020 7:02 AM

“The First Note is Silent” is by far my favorite of the banger collab era. At the time I could barely get through it because I feared it was a permanent shift towards straightforward lyrics + famous EDM co-producers - listening knowing that that’s not the case, it’s such a good track.

― cheek, Sunday, May 10, 2020 1:09 PM

https://i.imgur.com/v8l6bsL.jpg

This song is creating one of the best memories in my life, I was young, without responsibilities, on university and lived party life, thank you for that

- literally get a tingling sensation whenever I listen to this song. dunno if it was the chemical enjoyment of the first time I heard this song or what.

-- It will be exactly that reason of your first pill. I feel the same with 'two months off’ by underworld

My #5, too low!

One thing that mustn't be overlooked in 'And I Will Kiss' is the little nods to 'Rez' that waft in during the fourth minute.

http://ghostfood.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u086-337843.png

86= Skym 189 points, 4 votes
1999 album track Beaucoup Fish JBO1005431
VHS promo

Probably my favourite beatless thing by them (from not a big list I realise).

(oh my ballot suggests otherwise lol nm)

Is 'Skym' the "do you still feed the animals?" one? That song is absolute dogshit.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, July 6, 2011 11:45 PM

yeah, and Skym might also be Mark G's "slow ballady" one: beatless singing over contemplative piano chords, throbbing sci-fi engine room synths later, poor becoming moderate, Viking, Dogger

(Skym is definitely on my "non-amazing" list but I do like the synth sound. its presence after Winjer is probably why I thought I didn't like Winjer and was doubly surprised by Dan's post until I put it on and went "oh, yeah, this one is good actually")

― a passing spacecadet, Wednesday, July 6, 2011 11:48 PM

i (i...i...i...) like Skym

― blueski, Wednesday, July 13, 2011 10:19 AM

i too enjoy skym, and since i managed to not even vote in my own poll, maybe i should have gone with that

― BradNelson, Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:07 AM

My #5, too low!

― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

lol, this one almost cracked my top 10, we three voters did some heavy lifting on this one.

One person voted for Shudder, and a couple of people confirmed that they definitively intended votes for Shudder / King Of Snake to not be votes for King Of Snake per se. If those people had voted for both compositions with equal enthusiasm, then 192ish points would have seen it rank at 93 or so.

the underrated part of that album (besides "Winjer") is the ambient noodling of "Shudder" bursting into the intro to "King of Snake"; it's kind of cheap tension/release but it works SO WELL

― DJP, Saturday, February 19, 2011 2:59 AM

This 199 live audio link goes to Shudder; skip back to the start to catch Pens Git, Ramajama and Rowla beforehand.

*1999; cat bumped the laptop.

i thought i listened to pretty much everything but apparently i missed sooo muuuuch!!!

Yep. I really tried to listen to as much as I could in preparation of the poll and I've still only heard seven of the placing tracks so far!

I made a long list of albums + EP + custom playlists that totaled like 30 hours and even still I missed some stuff

new poll after this poll!

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u085-337843.png

85 Twenty Three Blue
193 points, 6 votes
2016 bonus track / 2018 7" b-side

audio

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u085-909369.png

I like Barbara except for the first two songs. Really love Twenty Three Blue, the Japanese bonus track:

― brotherlovesdub, Thursday, May 7, 2020 11:14 AM

yeah that really should have been on there, it's not like there wasn't room for it.

― ufo, Thursday, May 7, 2020 11:20 AM

https://i.imgur.com/IhU3QrG.jpg

i kinda get why it wasn't on Barbara Barbara now, it doesn't really fit with the vibe of the rest of it that well.

As with Please Help Me, the only clear B-side from the album being great makes people say "it should have been on the album!"

but they sit better in a playlist of noodly / ambienty Underworld tracks than they do closing the sequence of tracks on the ablum