After more than 30 years together and, more recently, a few years apart, Underworld have rediscovered their spark.
Mention the UK duo and it’s likely that 1996 B-side single 'Born Slippy', which shot up the UK charts following its inclusion on Danny Boyle’s 'Trainspotting' soundtrack, will be the tune many recall.
That seminal '90s anthem’s success aside, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith’s bulging discography soundtracks an exciting time in UK – and global – electronica.
A string of albums released throughout the 1990s and noughties on revered label Junior Boys Own established Underworld (then a trio including Darren Emerson) as one of the most progressive purveyors of techno, house and forward-thinking dance music.
Now, their ninth album 'Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future' is about to drop and, amazingly, is the first Underworld album completed entirely in the studio with Hyde and Smith side-by-side.
A combination of factors and technology had always seen the duo progress material from great distances apart and, while a production approach that proved undeniably successful, it had, by the time of 'Barking’s release in 2010, reached a “low point” of “just file sharing”.
“I didn’t join a band to live by file sharing,” Hyde recalls from his home in Essex. “I like being in the company of my fellow musicians, looking in their eyes and sparking off each other in the room.
“That’s what I’d done for three albums, that’s what Rick has done for [Underworld’s performance at the Opening Ceremony of the London] Olympics Games, and yet we weren’t doing it together.”
It was Hyde’s work with Brian Eno and others in recent years, however, coupled with Underworld’s triumphant 20th anniversary performances of “game-changing” 1994 album 'dubnobasswithmyheadman', that led to a return to the studio. “We got some clarity in thought,” Hyde explains.
“We woke up and realised that we like being together. We [had] carried on touring throughout the time that we hadn’t been putting out music [and] we used that time to have little experiences, to work out frustrations, to try new things, work with other people.
“For me, certainly, the thing that became increasingly apparent was that I missed my mate. I missed being in the studio with him. All this stuff I was doing with other people, it reminded me that, Rick and I, in all these years, have never made an album in the studio together.”
The results of this “new” approach immediately bore fruit. Recorded and mixed in under a year – about a third of the time it had previously taken to complete an Underworld record – 'Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future' is a rich, textured foray into atmospheric electronica.
As Hyde explains, the “very very positive experience” saw Underworld “rediscover their spark”.
“When I look back on it, the way we worked was the way we used to work before computers. It was two guys, in a room, with their gear playing, until somebody does something that the other gets excited about, and then you start recording.
“The computer was just a tape recorder and that’s all it should be. Computers have become far too restrictive in my mind, unless we use them only as tools to capture our imagination. That just goes to show what happens when the two of us get in a room together rather than this extended file sharing nonsense.”
'Barbara, Barbara, We Face A Shining Future' is released 18 March.
