Underworld

One question that bands and musicians are asked more often than anything else is what their inspiration is. What bands they listen to, who they try to emulate. I can say without a doubt that the band what I've tried most often to imitate is Underworld.

Oh sure, there is a lot of influence from (but not limited to) Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Faithless, The Beloved, Chemical Brothers, Moby, Yello, New Order, Art Of Noise, Juno Reactor, Kraftwerk, and a whole lot more that I can't even think of now. But Underworld is the driving force behind what I've done since 2005.

Underworld is a band that when you mention it to someone, they either a) think you're talking about the movie 'Underworld', b) have no idea what you're talking about, or c) go, oh yeah, "Lager Lager Lager', right?" More than a one trick pony, Underworld is a band that has been around in one form or another since the 80's, and I've tried to enlighten people to this since I first heard 'Second Toughest In The Infants' in 1996.

A brief History of Underworld, if you will:

Karl Hyde and Rick Smith began as two members of a synth-pop band called Freur in 1983, and their big hit was 'Doot Doot'. Their name was spelled as an unrecognizable symbol, beating Prince to the punch by several years.

In 1986 Freur became Underworld (Mark 1, as they refer to it) and it was a six-piece ensemble in the pop realm, They struck some minor success with their first album 'Underneath The Radar', and a second album didn't perform as well. 1990 saw the first incarnation of the band disappear.

in 1992, Karl and Rick teamed up with DJ Darren Emerson and they revamped the sound of their creations more to what insiders feel is the quintessential Underworld as we know it: driving beats, quirky, obscure and poetic vocals and synth sounds. After releasing a number of singles under the moniker Lemon Interrupt, they became Underworld Mark 2 and released a slew of singles, remixes and albums. The inclusion of 'Born Slippy.NUXX' to the 'Trainspotting' soundtrack in 1996 was their biggest coup, opening their music up to a whole new range of people.

Apart from this hit, their other notable singles include 'Cowgirl' (featured on the soundtrack to 'Hackers'), 'Push Upstairs', 'Pearls Girl' and 'King Of Snake'. Underworld have also lent their hand to many remixes for others, including Bjork, Depeche Mode, Leftfield, Front 242, Chemical Brothers, St. Etienne, William Orbit and Massive Attack to name a few.

On a personal note, I came to know Underworld as many others: from 'Trainspotting' But as I usually do in cases like this, I don't stop there, I find more and more music from an artist i like, go back in time and see where they came from, and what their MO is. I knew I liked dancing to the record, but was that all there was to it?

When I found and bought 'Second Toughest In The Infants', I was immediately hooked. The 16-minute long trilogy of an opening track ('Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream Of Love') simply captivated me in its intricacies, and I don't kind telling you that it brought me almost to tears on more than one occasion. I know this is hard for most people to believe that so-called 'techno music' could evoke such a response, but that is what Underworld do: they craft and sculpt a song or album in such a way that its more than just something to dance to. They put so much thought and emotion into it (I think) and it's not just about a beat or a synth, it's a process of exploration and seeing what happens. It's that creative process that I had been trying to achieve in my own work (and most of the time not to my expectations) and there it was right in front of me. To my mind, they had nailed what I had been trying to find in myself. The ability to put into music everything that I was feeling at the time of writing.

Oftentimes, as their career went on, I would hear a new song from Underworld, and immediately have an idea for a song of my own. For example. Since I heard the aforementioned album, I began to try to find a way to meld my own songs together to make longer tracks. I did this on my first collection with 'I'm Not Dead/1,269 and Rising', in 2006, but the pinnacle of this idea was made for me with the latest album which has three tracks combined together to form a 20 minute long track: 'Bad Day/Dad's Day/Hard Candy' aka 'The Unforetold' suite -- then I reversed and remixed the order for an alternate version called 'The Nine-Oh Five."

To me this is the best example of the effect Underworld has had on my creative process. I even managed to write lyrics based on their example. Karl tends to write what seems to be nonsense on the surface, but if you listen (or read their various explications of such things) you can see that every song does indeed have a theme. It may not sport proper grammar or even real words, but it's a theme all the same, in a stream of consciousness kind of way. That was how I wrote the lyrics for my latest record. I froze a moment on time, and explored every facet of that moment and put those facets into words, sounds feelings, emotions -- a very forensic process of observation.

And its more than just the music. You can tell that the members of Underworld are really digging what they are doing. They are a part of every aspect of their music, their live shows, their album art, their image, everything. Their website, underworldlive.com, features personal input from the band, blog-style, on a regular basis -- photographs, demo tunes, unreleased music and music that you can only get from their site. They have live podcasts of music that they like, some by unsigned artists. They manage their own graphic arts studio called Tomato, which often has 'Art Jams' featuring nearby creators who come in for a day or two and just do what they do. They have released a couple of typography books which read like the lyrics to their songs, but are creatively designed to be a visual experience as well as a verbal one.

In short, they expose every aspect of their art and their lives as it relates to the creative process, which is something I've also been doing for a long time. The creative process is so very important to those who have the talent, and they have certainly not dropped the ball in this department.

It's hard for me to really find any fault with them, quite frankly. Even the things I don't really care for, songs or pursuits or what have you, I really have to respect in spite of that, because they are doing it. Not for the money, I suspect. Just because they want to. And they want others to be involved. It reminds me of something a friend of mine said ten years ago about trying to gather a 'group of non-assholes', which I took to mean people who just wanted to create and be there while other did the same, with no selfishness or trying to steal the limelight. Unfortunately we never found it, but I'm glad to see that someone did.

On August 11, I will be seeing Underworld at the Kool Haus in Toronto for the first time since I started listening to them. I'm 36 years old and generally at concerts I don't move around much, I prefer to sit and take in the spectacle so I don't miss anything. But I assure you that if the show is anything even remotely like the 2000 Live DVD concert footage I have, I'm gonna be raving around like a teenager on X, even though I'm a 36-year old single father who doesn't do drugs. I simply can't wait. I'm actually going to take a half-day and go to a meet up party before the show with a bunch of people I've never met before. I'm so psyched that I'll be able to be in the same room with people that have made so much of a difference in my musical life.

10 REASONS TO LOVE UNDERWORLD

1: The video for 'Dinosaur Adventure 3D'

2: This lyric to 'Moaner'

the city loves you
city loves a boyfriend long walks with a boyfriend
city loves a boyfriend friends walking with the boyfriend
and the nights with the boyfriend
and the city loves you
loves you
loves you loves everyone
everyone is smiling
the smiling is pushing it around
pushing it around
like the shadows of evolution in the dark
super boys where time is all
and where time is everything
where time is all
time to earth
earth wind and fire
and the sun in your hair
black metal walls are falling
i'm the hunger
i'm metal
i'm stainless
i'm milk in your plastic

3: Many different digital downloads of live shows performed in 2007 and 2008, each with its own cover art, culled from the 'art jam' induced painting for the cover of 'Oblivion With Bells'.

4: The fact that they can do stomping hard trance and techno tracks and just as easily do a chill out track using only a retriggered guitar sample, cut up and affected and still make it seem like the same people doing it.

5: The 'Soft Mix' of Depeche Mode's 'Barrel Of A Gun'

Barrel Of A Gun [Underworld Soft Mix] - Depeche Mode

If this isn't enough to convince you, then just take my word for it.