Prog and dance music? The thought might make you baulk, however when Prog spoke to bounce outfit Underworld again in 2018 we found they grew up listening to ELP and Crimson, took ideas from Hawkwind and Captain Beefheart and are true mavericks of music.
Multi-segmented 15-minute tracks. Rhythms that appear to journey you up, flip themselves inside out after which morph into a very completely different beat. Impressionistic, cinematic soundscapes. Cryptic, surreal lyrics and located sounds. Co-opting of a number of completely different genres throughout the similar observe, together with jazz, world and classical influences. Prolonged instrumental passages. Conceptually conceived sleeve paintings and thematically linked tracks.
Given all these traits in Underworld’s music, it’s hardly shocking that the primary two genres listed on their Wikipedia entry start with the phrase ‘progressive’. However whereas they could have made progressive home, or progressive trance, or experimental, avant-garde techno, have been they prog?
Not notably, in case you contemplate prog to be a easy contraction of the time period progressive rock, as a result of for all of the myriad forms of music Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have made since they have been first in a band collectively enjoying dub-influenced, oddball synth-pop within the early 80s, you’d battle to label any of them ‘rock’.
However one factor Underworld have all the time been is true mavericks, of a form that prog has all the time embraced and celebrated. And it seems, when you get speaking to their lyricist, vocalist and resident surrealist Karl Hyde, they’ve much more in widespread with the music elsewhere on this journal than you may at first assume.
The very first thing that disqualifies Underworld from true progness in some listeners’ eyes is that they’re a dance act. As a result of to some, dancing to prog is as wise and fascinating as cling gliding to astrophysics. And the place are the guitars? Truly there are heaps in Underworld’s music, however their sound is invariably warped electronically and thrown into a bigger combine. However even when they’re an digital act, didn’t an enormous increase to prog’s early improvement come from using groundbreaking, experimental digital devices such because the Mellotron? And since when have been synthesisers not an important a part of prog’s basic sonic blueprint?
We additionally shouldn’t neglect that early prog’s fingerprints have been everywhere in the early digital music scene. There are few bands in historical past extra influential than Kraftwerk, and so they started life as a progressive artwork rock act, even when they minimize their hair and swapped 22-minute one-side-of-an-LP compositions for shorter items earlier than they made their best-known data. Krautrock was additionally an enormous affect on electronica simply because it impressed progressive rock, and Hyde factors to it as a serious affect.
“We each grew up listening to John Peel,” he explains, “and that encompassed the whole lot from dub to prog to krautrock, so even once we started making digital music, we introduced all that stuff with us.”
Each dipped their toes in prog as followers rising up within the 70s, with Hyde recalling, “I used to be an enormous Hawkwind fan. To me, that was techno earlier than techno, trance earlier than trance.
“We have been each massive ELP followers, and I’m positive in case you have a look at our file collections again then you definately’d have seen Sure, Greenslade, King Crimson…”
But for a lot of the Nineteen Eighties, Hyde and Smith have been pursuing a profession as extra of a mainstream synth-pop act, however even then that they had a want to emulate heroes that had blended pop sensibility with an urge to experiment and resist categorisation. “Our early sound was based mostly round bands like The Tubes,” he says, “however then our love of German digital music took over, and that form of spacey-sounding panorama music. Information like Bowie’s Low and lots of movie music linked with us, and that led us in the direction of techno.”
In response to Hyde, each time they might discover themselves “again on the dole” after one other failed try at pop stardom, they might react by making “outsider music”. After which they all of a sudden discovered themselves a part of an enormous underground motion of like minds: acid home. However even then, he says he heard prog within the combine, and “nice similarities between Tangerine Dream and acid home”.
The trendy-day Underworld, referred to by band and followers, in distinctly progtastic type, as Underworld MkII, was born when DJ Darren Emerson joined them in 1990.
Whereas he helped them develop a tighter techno foundation to their sound, Smith and Hyde have been impressed to strive a unique method to writing music, one which broke them out of their earlier generic shackles.
“I needed to strive a much less conventional method, so I began simply wandering round writing what I noticed, what I felt, because it occurred to me. Then Beefheart saved creeping in. I all the time cherished the way in which he may use phrases. Considered one of my favorite lyrics is on Shiny Beast, Tropical Sizzling Canine Night time. The road ‘steppin’ out of a triangle into striped mild’ actually resonated with me. I began to check Beefheart’s view of the world, the way in which he paints, his lyrics, the issues he describes, it simply blows me away.”
These influences could be heard within the surreal, stream-of-consciousness lyrical snatches punctuating Underworld’s music, an method that first hit its stride on 1994’s dubnobasswithmyheadman. By that time, it was clear that Underworld
had an retro but very prog disregard for the constraints of the three-minute pop tune or typical pop or dance music templates. The album lifts off with the 13-minute journey by way of Mmm Skyscraper I Love You, which might find yourself being a favorite on the genre-agnostic Membership Canine and Megadog rave nights that grew out of London then unfold throughout the nation within the early 90s. This scene fostered prog-friendly acts resembling Ozric Tentacles and Eat Static in addition to electronica legends resembling Orbital.
“Once we made dubno… and [1996 follow-up] Second Hardest In The Infants, our angle was, would you ask Miles Davis to make a three-minute pop tune? The music goes the place it must go. The thought of a ‘refrain’ – what’s that? A noise recurring? A peak of vitality? Perhaps it’s a phrase, or a riff, however to us it was all a part of the highs and lows of a journey, which we needed to happen naturally, not have to show up at rigidly decided intervals.”
One other proggy attribute of a few of Underworld’s greatest tracks is their penchant for unconventional, syncopated rhythms, and beats that mutate to disorientating but hypnotic impact. Try Juanita or Spoonman, M.E. It’s a part of an method to music that’s pleased to disclose layers of melodies, sounds and beats that unfold on repeated listens.
“We all the time stated the singer ought to play supporting position to the rhythm part,” Hyde explains. “The vocalist is an oscillator, as a result of the human voice is an thrilling instrument that may make any sound you need. So the primary two stuff you have been meant to listen to was the groove, and the bass, then later all the opposite melodies, and later individuals would say, ‘Oh, is that man really singing one thing there, oh wow! I’ve been listening to it for 2 years and I solely simply seen that!”’
After a remix of Born Slippy .NUXX was included on the soundtrack to Trainspotting in 1996, Underworld have been catapulted into dance music’s massive league. And though they continued to make acclaimed, experimental data resembling 1999’s Beaucoup Fish, Hyde feels they misplaced their method just a little.
“Because it received greater and greater, I believe the dance scene misplaced this pirate spirit that was such side of outsider tradition. We’d performed in castles, up mountains, and outdated gun turrets or on seashores, then rapidly we have been in well being and security conferences and the spirit of journey was misplaced.”
In the meantime, Hyde was discovering that the celebration scene was having an antagonistic impact on him. “I used to be a performing alcoholic and it was killing me,” he admits. However as soon as he known as time on the 24-hour celebration, Underworld would proceed to broaden their artistic horizons, regardless of Darren Emerson leaving the band in 2001. The jazz-inflected Cups that opened 1999’s Beaucoup Fish was laced with classical-style orchestral motifs, whereas they have been quickly incorporating world music components on 2002’s A Hundred Days Off.
For Hyde, this was a mirrored image of a musical panorama that had opened up significantly because the flip of the 90s.
“It was nice to play to audiences that didn’t know something about what style we have been from. That was improbable – we’d be on earlier than Korn or Metallica and that was superb as a result of we knew our problem was to show them on, regardless that at some gigs, the group would have a look at us as in the event that they needed us to die horribly and shortly. Ultimately, we’d invariably flip it spherical.”
He stays an enormous fan of genre-splicing, however belongs firmly to the ‘expertise borrows, genius steals’ college of eclecticism. “When it’s only a case of sticking guitars onto techno, or a dance beat on a guitar observe, it doesn’t do a lot for me. I prefer it when a band actually hijack one other style. I grew up listening to progressive musicians utilizing jazz or classical and incorporating German electronics into their sound. Whenever you’d hear bands like Hawkwind or King Crimson, they took components from numerous genres and assembled them collectively. In the event you prefer it, don’t simply nick it – subvert it and take it on
a journey to elsewhere.”
Above all, what Underworld have in widespread with prog musicians is their want to problem themselves and their viewers. As Prog speaks to Hyde, he’s engaged on a brand new piece with Smith, a part of an formidable plan to place out a brand new observe each Thursday. Oh, and there’s an idea behind it too…
“We’re releasing tracks as a sequence with Drift because the title and most important theme – whether or not that’s the thought of drifting within the bodily sense or, say, drifting as a automotive racing factor. It’s audio-visual, with accompanying movies, but it surely’s actually thrilling as a result of we’ve got to provide you with tracks each week – typically the day earlier than launch, we don’t also have a observe, so Rick and I are like, ‘We’ve received to tug one thing out right here.’ I discover it refreshing to vary from the outdated method the place six months prematurely the album’s finished and it’s important to wait to place it out. Doubtlessly, with this, we will launch tracks each time we wish to, based mostly on one thing we heard or an thought we had final evening.”
That additionally hyperlinks in to Tomato, the design and movie collective the duo are a part of, which has provide you with their album sleeves and different multimedia occasions they’ve been a part of.
“It goes again to Robert Fripp speaking about small, impartial cellular networks of clever individuals sitting exterior company buildings and exchanging concepts,” says Hyde. “We’ve taken that concept as a blueprint since 2000. So I assume we’ve got Fripp to thank for the way we do issues. Is that prog sufficient for you?”
That’ll do properly, thanks.
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