[rating=9.00]
Remember Underworld? Though they’ve been around (in various versions) since 1980, they are arguably most famous for 1995’s “Born Slippy,” a dance/rave anthem that featured prominently in the film Trainspotting. Indeed, it was through “Born Slippy” that this reviewer first really discovered Underworld. As for many others, though, “Born Slippy” was merely the first step into a new world in which hardcore dancefloor/rave techno could mix in harmonica, guitar, completely non-sensical vocals, and more to create something entirely new, and powerful. And though “Born Slippy” came after Dubnobasswithmyheadman, it was the latter that truly set the tone for Underworld, for techno, and indeed for much of the pop music that has come since.
The twentieth anniversary of Dubnobasswithmyheadman’s release sees a reissue, “meticulously remastered,” as the press release notes, at Abbey Road by Underworld’s Rick Smith. In addition to the original album are four more discs containing previously unreleased material, alternate mixes and remixes. In addition, the package contains a 60-page liner book including both an essay written, interestingly, by the English writer Jon Savage (who has had a long career as a music journalist and writer, with a special focus on and knowledge of the Sex Pistols and punk music) and artwork that, while rather non-sensical, manages to perfectly fit the album (perhaps unsurprisingly, the work was done by the same art collective, tomato – which includes Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde – that did the artwork for the original album).
The remixes and extra material is, in many ways, exactly what you’d expect: sonic explorations of all shapes and sizes, longform aural electronic poems to life in a city, to the dirt and grime of alleys and fast food joints and rubbish bins and hard pavement and hard living; to the world, in short, in which many of us live. Listening, one finds oneself slipping into the tracks, almost wishing for a long, dark straightaway, a fast car, and the glow of a far-away city receding into the distance. Underworld masterfully built these tracks out of sounds both familiar and modern, layered with little bits that remind the listener that though humans created this, we have entered an age in which humans and machines blend in ways entirely unprecedented and not yet entirely comfortable. The results are dark and grimy, uncertain and unclear, and yet crazy hypnotic, the kind of music that, if given the chance, can draw you in and hold you indefinitely.
The tracks range across the auditory palate as one might expect. Some seem mere chunks of sonic exploration, tidbits from a far-off time, fiddling around in the studio (and indeed, the entirety of the fifth disc is exactly that: previously unreleased live rehearsal recorded in Underworld’s home studio in 1993). Others points clearly to things to come, with improv bits that seem to need only (classic Underworld) random vocals and a solid hook on top to rule the world’s dance floors. And some are merely great examples of the dancey, groovy music that brought Underworld into the spotlight in the first place.
More than anything, this compilation is a great look back at a truly groundbreaking, influential, and excellent album by a band that long ago earned its place among the greats of electronic music – and really, among pop musicians in general, given the influence it has had on acts from Radiohead to Bjork and beyond. When listened to in its entirety (a feat, to be sure, at over six hours of music), it provides a fantastic musical foundation upon which to build one’s understanding of all that has followed.
