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

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!

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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

I like Barbara except for the first two songs.

Fighting talk

I had Skym pretty high in my ballot, I've always found it really affecting as it comes across like a break up song. Hits me in the same place as early Red House Painters, as weird as that sounds!

https://i.ibb.co/4Jxw7yx/gg-rickhand.gif

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

The way they'll rework and rearrange things over and over while developing them, or go back to elements of tracks and lift them to turn into new songs years later, and from how much he's able to do just playing their music onstage, let alone rearranging it on the fly, you imagine Rick has some kind of bonkers supercomputer brain - the amount he writes, too! - but he'll talk about how if he's not recording at the time it comes out, then it's usually gone forever.

The supercomputer just works to generate his demo-cataloguing filenames, I guess.

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u084-452434.png

84. Pinetum
197 points, 4 votes
2019 free-to-mailing-list mp3 as part of Drift

video by Simon Taylor extended album version audio

oh damn crank it up this piece is killer

― frogbs, Friday, April 19, 2019 6:58 AM

always taken aback by the sound design of Underworld's drums, it's just constantly mesmerising. Album to album, project to project, it's just so captivating.

Drums by Otis Jordan.

zoned out while listening to this and thought I had discovered some excellent long lost dubnobass B-side

remembering the days when you could busk down in the underground stations... i miss those days.. thanks otis was fun to watch you..

today it's pretty much been "Pinetum" over and over

― frogbs, Saturday, June 15, 2019 1:16 PM

yep gonna be today too lol

Hypnotic. Love it. A Drift highlight.

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83. Parc
198 points, 5 votes
2005 live track Darc, remixed for 2008 Japanese broadcast

audio
original live audio 2005

The real crime is that "Parc" wasn't included - that's probably one of their very best, so strange to see it essentially left unfinished and placed on a Japan-only remix compilation

― frogbs, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 6:51 AM

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

audience video 2009 (approx 70% Les Paul solo)

oh man way too low

PENSIONERS TRAPPED IN THEIR HOUSES

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81= Soniamode (Aditya Game Version)
204 points, 5 votes inc one for OG
2019 free-to-mailing-list mp3 as part of Drift, rewritten for 2019 digital single

original video by Simon Taylor & Ibrahim Muasher for Tomato
Aditya Game video by Simon Taylor & Ibrahim Muasher for Tomato

THE SHADOW OF LEHMANN

CORPORATE WELFARE QUEENS

audience video 2019

ZOMBIE GOVERNMENT

ZOMBIE ECONOMICS

https://i.imgur.com/azvf0VZ.gif

THE BROKEN PROMISES OF AN ENTIRE POLITICAL CLASS

CAPITALISM'S DEFAULT SETTINGS

love the Soniamode story.

All credit to Ned T Rifle.

Born lippy: how I helped Underworld write a socialist banger

― Ned Trifle X, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 9:17 PM

Obviously not about me, I didn't help them.

― Ned Trifle X, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 9:18 PM

oh wait

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u081-625675.png

81= Threat Of Rain 
204 points, 7 votes
2019 free-to-mailing-list mp3 as part of Drift

video by Simon Taylor and Rick Smith for Tomato

others: i've gotta new boyfriend.. me: i've discovered new music

Holy shitballs, what an EPIC train ride through mental sound city. All aboard!!!

My interpretation of this track, for what its worth: A person trying to convince themselves they are ok (I'm good, I'm alright), but something dark is brewing deep within and gathers momentum until it literally erupts and takes over. When it finally subsides they are left with the aftermath. The threat of rain was actualised and boy did it pour and now everything is drenched.

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

- this is their longest track in a very long time isn't it?
-- If you don't count And I Will Kiss, then this is the longest since Ancient Phat Farm Coat.

epic... dark... brewing... drenched. Yes!

Parc is another one I spaced on til this poll. What a groove. Would've been higher if it was on an album for sure.

one thing about Parc...it feels like it should be longer. it fades out just as things are really starting to get good.

If you don't count And I Will Kiss, then this is the longest since Ancient Phat Farm Coat.

Two weeks later, the 47-minute Appleshine Continuum was accidentally uploaded early to youtube...

there is no way that is next!

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u080-283271.png

80. 215 Miles 206 points, 5 votes, 1 #1
1994 12" / B-side

audio

Aha. A #1, wow! First occurrence yet i think? Classic. I had it down my ballot somewhere. We'll yet see "Thing in a Book" if this is any indication :)

Forgot to vote for this as it's not on Spotify. Remember buying both 12 inches *and* the cd single at the time to get all the different versions of Dark & Long they released (and so many were absolutely killer)

I mean it's such an incredible collection of remixes from just one song. You obviously have the monsters that are Dark Train and Thing In A Book but then you also have this and Spoon Deep and also used to hear the Burts mix played out quite a lot in the clubs.

Trying to think of another electronic act that got so much excellent material out of just one song and drawing a blank.

https://i.imgur.com/1ewmljj.jpg

Bugs me they left tracks off the boxsets, such as Dark & Long (215 Miles)

at the early part of this poll, I made a playlist of the stuff "left off" the boxset... it would have added 3 discs. 4 if you you add the Misterons "cutting room floor" mix (and you should!). That's still not to speak of remixes for others

I might stick my early-days compilation tracklists in the ballots thread, for fun. You can see why they left recently-remastered stuff from the 2012 best-ofs off, to respect obsessive fan purchasers, but the 7" Dark & Long probably could have made way for another of the "versions..."

The cutting room floor mix is so good, it should be available in higher bitrate quality.

(Based on consensus, we're treating the majority of the Dark & Long B-mixes as separate tracks, but will provide combined point totals eventually.)

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79. Dinosaur Adventure 3D
218 points, 7 votes
2002 single from album A Hundred Days Off

video
live audio 2002

xp Cool. Yeah my playlist didn't bother with edit versions and all that stuff, either

Dinosaur Adventure 3D is glorious, must be the next single.

― Ronan, Wednesday, September 25, 2002 12:30 AM

Dinosaur Adventure 3D doesn't do anything King Of Snake didn't, but it's still a top choon...that's all it is, a top choon...

― blueski, Wednesday, September 25, 2002 2:20 AM

https://i.imgur.com/6PHsfH6.jpg

a lot of it feels uninspired for this band...particularly "Dinosaur Adventure" which seems like an analgam of past UW successes constructed just for single purposes ...

― frogbs, Tuesday, February 5, 2013 2:18 AM

Chicken Lips remix of DA3D was a fave at the time with a kinda proto-Rex The Dog/electrohouse feel going on.

This is one of the songs I underrated when voting. The beat is nothing particularly new for them but Karl's vocal is really memorable, makes the whole thing come together

He's overwhelmed by your appreciation.

https://i.ibb.co/NYG4g1J/gg-karlface.gif

215 miles was my number 1, and it was a close choice between that and one of the other dark and long “mixes”. 20 minutes long and doesn’t get boring, chugging along but constantly changing. In the U.K. at the time there was an arbitrary time limit on singles, it could be 20 mins including b sides, or 40 mins if it was all mixes of the same track. getting an album length cd masquerading as remixes really endeared them to me. Then the import cd was another 70 minutes and didn’t even have this track on it. Will love this forever. And it isn’t even on Spotify or the deluxe box set! Crazy