What do songs like Underworld’s Cowgirl, Dark and Long, and Dirty Epic bring to mind when you hear them? Can you remember exactly where you were the first time you heard each lyrical shout of “lagerlagerlagerlager” and the beats that go with it? Does someone playing Moaner drive you to gasp, simply because you remember the first time you fell into obsession of Underworld’s music and the surrounding tides of emotion it brings? Is Dirty Epic one of your old anthems, representing a time when spirits were free and the beats behind the music would haunt your memories as you move on in life? Or what about when you catch a haunting rift of Born Slippy from someone’s CD player? Perhaps you think about the first time you heard it in an old downtown movie theatre in 1996 while watching Trainspotting with your best friends, knowing that the soundtrack as well as the movie would leave its mark on your soul forever. ”Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career…” For more than a decade people have developed a love for all things Underworld and for them, the choice has been amazing music.
JIVE Magazine recently had a rare opportunity to speak with Karl Hyde, Underworld’s vocalist, about what is now being touted “An Underworld Moment,” the new two-disk compilation of what represents a decade of the group’s musical history together. The new Underworld Anthology 1992-2002 is set to be released December 2nd and it’s not going to be what you expect. This is not just a standard “best of” re-release of the original tracks that became the band’s eventual golden hits. This Anthology is truly an Underworld’s version of Underworld. It represents a decade of dance music that tells the story about their start together, moving along from obscure white labels to the soundtracks that represented more than one generation, and goes on even further to the phase in their career that lead them on the path to world tours and superstardom. While other artists still put together “Back To Mine” or greatest hits albums, Underworld is branching off to get “back into the mind” of where they were when they first produced these songs for the first time.
Karl Hyde is a soft spoken, yet animated man. When he speaks about music, his passion speaks through the fine British accent. When asked how the idea of Anthology started to formulate, there’s not anything Karl is leaving up to mystery. “It’s actually just sort of our looking back at our development. It spans from the early days where we walked around trying to sell our stuff to record stores. Actually, we were pushed into doing this record by JBO records who told us if we didn’t put another record out now it would be twenty years before we would see another one.”
The 16 song track list was put together by JBO and Karl and Rick Smith pretty much took a step back and waited to see the final listing. “If we had to come up with this track list, it would have taken us a million years to do it.” Which makes sense. You get the feeling when you talk to Karl that Anthology is something like a cherished family scrapbook. It’s as if, when he talks about the songs, the lyrics, and the music behind the new album, that he’s turning the pages of an old photo album with framed pictures in his mind’s eye. The pictures remind him of where Underworld was back then, during the good times and bad times, and also where the band came from. It also presumes to tell the listener where the band musically may travel next, in terms of collaborations and remixed songs by the likes of Paul Oakenfold among others.
The story Anthology tells is the evolution of three young men, Karl Hyde, Rick Smith, and Darren Emerson, who began their journey together in 1989 to create music that would eventually become so critically important that it would speak to several generations and become dubbed “our Anthem” or “theme song” for a collage of people throughout the world. Darren would go on to leave the band in 2000 to pursue his solo DJ career and direct his “Underwater” record label. Karl and Rick would continue to push the Underworld saga forward, with world tours and headlining pinnacle festivals with audiences in the hundreds of thousands each night.
As for which song list would help to tell the story, this task was just too hard for Karl and Rick to do. How do you ask a person to pick one memory or special moment in time over the other? “Each song represents something important to us from that time period. It’s really frightening to even listen to them and remember what it was like to be in that place. Some of those lyrics are sometimes from a dark place for me especially. It represents a state of mind I was in at that particular time. It’s really frightening but at the same time I’m not in that state now so it means so much to me on an emotional level.”
This “place” in time that Karl speaks of is more than just past reported problems with drinking and burn out. That is behind him now and the memories now come from the heart. There are memories of how he contrived his lyrics, for example, with an odd habit of writing down his instant observations on life. Everywhere they went, which is represented by a meandering roadmap of experiences like Reading and Glastonbury, or the clubs they went to in Europe, he recorded his thoughts of the moment, by jotting them down, recording ideas, words, passages into a sort of Poetry du Bizarre. If you ask Karl when he started doing this sort of auditory blogging, he’ll tell you about being inspired by Sam Shepard's Motel Chronicles, where the simplest of human experience is worthy of autobiographical poetry to feed the mind. The end result has been that millions of people have danced and sung “lagerlagerlagerlager” and “I get my kicks from channel six” at the top of their lungs, never fully understanding the true meaning of the lyrics that are locked tightly away in Karl’s head, or what he saw the day he wrote those words down on paper.
Underworld has many ideas and circumstances to convey. As it is, there was supposed to be a third CD that Karl and Rick wanted, but it didn’t pan out for this release. “Maybe in the future we can do it. We’ll see how it goes.” For Anthology, JBO opted to pick the songs on the two disk compilations and Karl and Rick have their hearts set on a possible third “organic” compilation that would have made the package a bit more complete, according to Karl. “Just more of the music that was so important to our evolution.”
Speaking of evolution, the hardcore Underworld fans may need to be forewarned that Anthology has a few remixed versions of the originals they have had a passion for sheltering. The fan forums on the internet have mixed reviews, but the overall opinion is that if you call yourself an Underworld fan, Anthology has a place in your collection. Karl and Rick are happy with the overall outcome and don’t seem worried about the affect a remixed Born Slippy, for example, has had. When asked what it was like to work with Paul Oakenfold on the track, Karl says that Paul is always great to work. “He just took the pieces we gave him and ran with it.”
They try not to provide input into people’s take on their music when recreating an Underworld song. They like it to be fresh when they hear it for the first time. “You know, I’ll be on the dance floor at some club and I’ll look over to Rick and say, “Hey! What song is this,” obviously enthralled, and that’s when Rick will tell me, ‘that’s the new remix of our song you didn’t really like in the studio when you heard it.’ And there I am on the dance floor loving it suddenly.” Obviously it has to do with the environment the music is presented in, Karl thinks, laughing as he says this. Because of this they avoid working too closely with the remix masters and let them do their jobs. They are very happy with the final outcome and the Born Slippy track on the new album is a great example of just sitting back and letting it happen.
When talking to Karl, you come to realize that the philosophy of “letting it just happen” has been their creed throughout the last fifteen years. Karl will tell you that his idea of what makes for a great dance track is that “It's got to take hold of you and move you on an emotional level. It just has to happen, you know, I'm a very self conscious person and to get me to move on a dance floor takes a very special feeling. I have to feel the music deep down."
That’s hard to believe if you’ve ever seen Karl on stage. At the Ultra Festival 2003 in Miami, thousands of people watched Karl Hyde bounce around and dance from one end of the stage to the other, singing and moving to the music at a frantic pace and to the point that faces in the crowd had streams of tears running down their faces in pure adoration of the performance. Karl’s charismatic stage presence would lead you to believe that there is no way in hell this man is self conscious about dancing in front of people anywhere, let alone a dance club. “It’s Rick’s music that does that to me. His music moves me.”
Their live act is always improvised which also adds to the excitement. Karl and Rick play off on each other’s energy as well as the audience’s energy. “We never do anything rehearsed. We don’t have a playlist.” Every time you have the fortune to see Underworld play live, remember that what you are seeing is improvised and just as new to them as it is to the audience. That alone will bring you to a higher level of respect for what you are witnessing. It’s almost impossible to believe that they aren’t reading each other’s mind on the stage as the music progresses.
Maybe this is the secret to Underworld’s success. ”It’s music that moves people, as well as moves through people.” Underworld’s music can’t be compared to anything else very easily. It has left its individual mark on the world. Their music is a mix of rock, dance and eclectic gothic musings on a lyrical tip that has broken down barriers of musical description and micro-scene ownership. When asked how Underworld music stands the test of time compared to many acts involved electronic dance music, Karl’s is quick to answer that this has been because of the people involved with the band over the years. “It’s about the people we’ve surrounded ourselves with and invested in.” In order to stay the test of time, he believes you have to have talented people that believe in what you are doing and the art you want to convey. This has been the Underworld secret to longevity. Underworld has been able to transcend through varying musical tastes or scenes simply because "the key is not to be ‘in’ a scene. We don't play to scenes at all actually. When you become part of a scene and that scene goes down, you go down with that scene. We’ve managed to avoid that.” He believes they make music for the people, not the scene the people are in.
After the Anthology album, there are plans in the works for another album of all new songs. They have been touring since May of 2002 but while they travel from city to city, hotel to hotel, Underworld composes new songs on their lap top, or they scribble down ideas in notebooks all the time. They are a whirlwind of ideas and the persistent urge to show the world the new material never leaves them. "We have so much we have to get out there. It’s not just the music, but we have our art." The internet has enabled them to showcase more than just music, and to an infinite audience.
Karl will tell you with an almost childlike unabashed glee how the internet and technology has changed their ability to communicate to their fans. When your career as a performer in a group spans back to 1989, you would think that there would be an enormous evolution and effect of over a decade of technological changes in the world. While some groups would resist change, Karl welcomes it and sees it as just another way to get their work across in a much more efficient way. You can go to www.underworldanthology.com, for example, and play around with the interactive site and find information and timelines about the band.
“I love the way technology has opened the doors for us to get the art out there as well as the music.” Karl’s obvious love for all things electronic, computer, and the technology behind it is obvious. He speaks of his laptop lifeline to the internet and the excitement he has about the Underworld Anthology website and what's available there is charming.
“Karl, you do know that in America, at least, you are what we fondly label ‘a computer GEEK’ right?”
“Oh really? I like that! Is that good?” he responds laughing heartedly.
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Underworld Anthology 1992-2002
Rick Smith - programmer
Karl Hyde - vocalist
Disc: 1
1. Bigmouth - Unreleased track 1992
2. Dirty - Unreleased track 1992
3. Mmm Skyscraper I Love You - Original version 1994
4. Rez - Original version / Unreleased on CD 1993
5. Spikee - Original version / Unreleased track 1993
6. Dirty Epic - Original version 1994
7. Dark & Long (Dark Train) - Original version 1994
Disc: 2
1. Cowgirl - Original version 1994
2. Born Slippy (Nuxx) - From The Trainspotting Soundtrack 1995
3. Pearls Girl - 1996
4. Jumbo - 1998
5. Push Upstairs - 1998
6. Moaner - 1998
7. King Of Snake - 1998
8. 8 Ball - From The Beach Soundtrack/ Never appeared anywhere else 1999
9. Two Months Off - 2002
