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

yea hearing Emerson's solo work definitely gave me the impression that his influence was more to nudge them in a more fruitful direction. still, I'm curious what AHDO would've sounded like had he stayed on.

great, thanks sic. I forgot they had a time with detailed credits. Karl's book sorta glazed over the writing, making Darren look crucial as their link to "the culture" at the time, "road testing" (an hour away) new material in his sets in London. Karl also credited the kid for making him feel like his guitar could sound cool with the music they were making (probably relates to Dirty Guitar), which is a cute through line in the book: Karl threatening to throw away his guitar 1000 times.

Everyone seemed to lose their shit over Border Country but Listen To Their No is the better track imo

Also, just reading that Underworld Vs Orbital thread and there are some hard takes in there

https://i.ibb.co/xDCKY7V/pals-1983-long.gif

My read is that Rick basically needs or likes to have one consistent, trusted person to ask "what do you think of this?," whether or not they're contributing their own ideas. He works most fruitfully when that person is Karl Hyde and Karl's contributing his own ideas, but they're not always on the same page.

(He and Alfie only let Karl join {freur} because he'd written one really good new song, and they make him promise to not be a rock dick anymore; eight years and five albummy things later, Underworld mk1 fall apart after Karl chucks a bunch of tantrums and insists the whole band rerecord an album that everyone else reckons sounds great as just Karl & guitar over Rick & a computer.)

He also seems to prefer that person to be someone he knows well and has worked with for a long time. Darren Price had been Underworld's regular tour DJ for a decade or so before he got hired as a permanent part-time studio whatever-he-does for Rick. Interviews and Drift writeups around the Misterons stuff suggest that JBO's Steve Hall is regularly relied on as a sounding board, and he's been working with Rick for 28 years now. When Rick's on a Danny Boyle project, it seems that they two work tightly together, and Karl may or may not pop in and add something here and there. It took them being invited to collaborate on Downpipe to open up to other collaborators for Barking, and there they did two tracks with the Downpipe fellas (and Rick found another reliable coworker for a few years in High Contrast).

When Underworld mk1 split, the core band had been together for a decade, since Rick was just about a teenager. Emerson wasn't picked because he was a promising songwriter, or a prodigy of a producer; he just happened to meet Rick Smith at a point when Rick was creatively alone, he knew enough to be able to mess about in a studio, and as a working DJ he had a feel for music that was able to pulse and change throughout a varying period of time, which is what Smith was looking for. We don't know how much he wrote, or produced hands-on, or was involved technically in their improvisational stage approach (though he was surely a big part of it philosophically) -- but even if his only job was to go "yeah I like that" or "how about you try this instead" when Rick played him stuff, and to test demos out in clubs, that was obviously an absolutely crucial contribution to what the group wanted to be at that time.

Seems fair to guess that Emerson and Smith's specific alchemy shifted after Second Toughest, as they start being credited separately for remixes around 1996. Listening to their fertile period of remixing together, and what they each did separately immediately after, might hint at what each brought to the team, or could just show the different directions they were heading. Whether they'd both gotten the most out of the partnership, or whether Darren did just prefer to make more money travelling the world as a DJ, it's hard to argue that '99 was the wrong time to part.

Here's Darren enjoying his life a few years later.

bring back channel V

Still listen a lot to this great mix from Emerson from 1995. Not really trance though

This thread gives me the impression that Underworld has, in the last four months or so, released approximately 138 hours of can't miss, best-they've-ever-done material.
― Eric H., Saturday, May 25, 2019 2:44 AM

lol that last quote cracks me up
― frogbs, Thursday, June 11, 2020 10:08 PM (yesterday)

LOL, Drift made me have to temporarily unbookmark the main Underworld thread.

uh, good news

https://underworld.bandcamp.com/

Wow, RicksDubbedOutDriftExperience

Okay, everyone revise their ballots and we'll start over again next week

o7

I think I completely forgot to put Cherry Pie on my ballot

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u053-649633.png

53. Glam Bucket
392 points, 10 votes
2007 album track from Oblivion With Bells

audio
audience video 2007

Glam Bucket was absolutely HUGE when played live but it's a case of 'guess you had to be there' because it can come across flat on the album. Overall it's a really solid record and my only complaint is Holding The Moth. That track was much stronger live before the album was released but they over worked it and it came out sounding stilted and awkward.

― brotherlovesdub, Wednesday, October 24, 2012 1:54 AM

Agreed about "Glam Bucket" too. It's like "Twist" from AHDO, it's decent enough on the album but it feels like they really figured out what to do with the track live. Then again UW is really much different live and in studio. In the studio everything is perfected in its own way (I really like the studio version of "Holding the Moth"!), but yes it does lose some of its spontaniety.
― frogbs, Wednesday, October 24, 2012 2:24 AM

how fucking great is "glam bucket"

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Saturday, January 26, 2019 7:01 AM

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

none of my absolute faves have come up yet and i am starting to wonder does that mean they're never coming or are they just all at the top (prob the latter most of them are v popular tracks i reckon)

but i did rank a few of the manchester street poems in the 20s-30s and i am starting to think they may just not appear!

i had a dream last night that i went to an underworld concert but i got kicked out after the second song because i wandered around the back of the stage to get a better look at the part of the song where rick smashes a viola (?!?!??!)

(then i got a costume and snuck back in lol)

Those live street poems are Rick's consolation prize to you.

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/interupt-dirty.png

With 399 points from 7 votes, including 1 #1, the 1992 12" Dirty by Lemon Interupt would have placed at 57 on individual votes.

full-length 12 inch rip
live audio 1992

yeah cool to see a bit more shine on the Manchester work.. that should raise a little more money for the project with album sales. Judging from the album poll, I'd be shocked to see any tracks place. Shocked!

The project coming out as "oh and here's a bonus double-LP-length album you can also buy this week" during Drift presumably meant that it got more two-time listens, but less dedicated attention, than one of their score-type-things normally would. "Yeah this is good but I'm already dealing with the two hours of material you've released this month!"

it's a nice listen but imo not really on par with the other Drift stuff. though "Meredith" is really great.

Rick's "Bungalow With Stairs" LP is really nice if you can find it. an hour of deeply odd ambient music. It takes some rather mundane conversations and then runs them through a text-to-speech app, it's pretty surreal.

oh man the version of "Seven Drone Music" on this thing is great

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u052-387424.png

52. Schiphol Test
432 points, 10 votes
2019 free-to-mailing-list mp3 as part of Drift

video by Simon Taylor & Ibrahim Muasher for Tomato

How far we have come. From stuggling to put enough music through trakker on an Amiga, with a bench full of kit, toggling sounds coarsely with keys, making sure we had enough space to save everything to floppy ... to sitting in an airport laying down tracks with as many channels as you want, filters galore and thousands of instruments and sounds at our fingertips

The title comes from Rick writing the track on an iPad while waiting for a plane in Amsterdam's Schipol airport.

Gobsmacked by how much good music they're pumping out. They're my undisputed #1 and I feel stupidly lucky to have so much new material from them to listen to 8,432,876 times.

I can't believe how much y'all produce. Music is just flowing out of you all the time. Thank you for it all

https://i.imgur.com/zrDcef7.jpg

if you were waiting for Most Ospitible, Who Rings the Bell, and King of Snake to have a baby, this one belongs to you.

I like!

― maffew12, Friday, May 31, 2019 8:15 PM

would love to know what Rick was using on his iPad. best guess is Garageband and then imported into Logic (they have some recentish images of Logic in their studio on Instagram).

oh man for my money this is the best drift track not named "custard speedtalk"

Finally went for the Drift box. Has the price come radically down, or am I misremembering?

I guess you bought the new, smaller box aimed at "many people's changed circumstances" and it'll arrive in the fall! Wonder if there's a trade-in program for the big box

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u051-091684.png

51. Another Silent Way 
441 combined points, 12 combined votes
2018 digital single initiating Drift

with 334 points from 9 voters, the original would have placed at 68 alone
Rockingham Drift Car Racing Circuit video by Simon Taylor
extended EP audio

Wait so is this original? Are you essentially writing the score for gorgeous displays of driving?

They're up to some interesting stuff on paper, but this song is complete shite. Karl's vocals are awful, as they have been lately. Rick needs to edit him more aggressively. The music is also laughably retro / trying to recapture what made them special in 1996, but ends up sounding like a parody / weak version of UW circa 95/96. I just want to hear Rick make ambient albums and let Karl go do paintings. His painting is miles better than his lyrics at this stage in his career.

― brotherlovesdub, Friday, November 2, 2018 4:48 AM

the "moving on..." bits are so great

(make mine a 99?)

107 points from 3 voters were for Another Silent Way / Drift Poem / Better Than Diamonds from Drift Series 1 box set
album suite audio

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

for all those people whinging over the years saying that underworld suffered with the loss of Darren Emerson welcomed back with open arms and relentless legs

I love both this song and bld's hot spicy takes

yea the 15 minute version is really where it's at

I think I completely forgot to put Cherry Pie on my ballot

Damn, I forgot to include "Deep Arch" on mine.

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u050-800816.png

50. Little Speaker 
451 points, 11 votes
2002 album track from A Hundred Days Off

audio

too fuckin low!!!!!

Early thoughts, obviously stand out tracks seem to be Little Speaker, that piano riff towards the end is absolutely hypnotic, just spins you round and round.

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

Little Speaker is such a sharp tune as well, very subtle but I could imagine it working really well live too, it's just so perfectly layered at the end, like really good techno except more soul and less machine.

― Ronan, Wednesday, September 25, 2002 8:23 PM

piano cover

https://i.imgur.com/8moyUy6.jpg

I like parts of it such as the wobbly off-beat rhythm on "Little Speaker" or the ambience of "Twist" (the live versions blow this out of the water by the way) but 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; "Sola Sistim" doesn't really go places and much of "Little Speaker" is kinda lame, especially as the bass drowns out everything else. I still like the album and think it's actually quite good for a post-2000 release from an electronic act but it was definitely a drop off from the first three. Come With Us I'd rate on the same level - not as good as the first three, does have some great tracks, just not enough substance for me

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

I retract that now, Little Speaker ain't lame & the album has plenty of substance

too late buddy! everything anyone says on the internet once has to remain their opinion forever

http://ghostable.uk/public/ilx/underworld/u049-033767.png

49. Oich Oich
461 points, 11 votes
1996 CD5 b-side

audio

nice young men

too late buddy! everything anyone says on the internet once has to remain their opinion forever

lol don't I know it. I've accidentally argued with myself on a music board more than once

anyway..."Oich Oich" is incredible, my favorite off the Pearl's Girl EP. wish there was an even longer version

Actually, there's one called Oich Oich that I like a lot too... Maybe that.

― KeefW, Thursday, May 18, 2006 8:27 AM

There is a 'jam' version from their old website. It's pretty good too.

― brotherlovesdub, Wednesday, April 22, 2015 12:55 PM

jam audio

https://i.imgur.com/YqfDAx9.jpg

A life without Faxed Invitation, Peach Tree, Trim, Best Mamgu Ever, Oich Oich, 8 Ball, Thing In A Book, and River of Bass is a life not worth living.

― brotherlovesdub, Thursday, May 31, 2018 2:19 AM

God tier three track single right there

https://i.ibb.co/Tmhhtp7/zepp-karlface.gif

I probably put "Oich Oich" too low. That dreamy guitar hook has been haunting me since we voted. It's a dark-sounding track with an incredible lightness to it