If you've been near a dance floor any time since 1996, chances are you've heard Underworld's ubiquitous anthem, Born Slippy, and perhaps even raised a pint at the refrain: 'shouting lager, lager, lager, lager'. Those may have been younger, crazier days for you but Karl Hyde and Rick Smith are still going strong after 27 years. If you thought the boys from Essex had gone back to Romford you haven't been paying attention or you're not a recidivist raver.
The pair have just had their first 'traditional' release in five years, Oblivion with Bells. But it's precisely because they've been busy breaking with tradition that you may not have kept up. Underworld went underground. Now free of the contractual obligations that suffocate so many musicians, they've spent the past few years at the vanguard of the digital release revolution. Before Radiohead grabbed recent headlines with their pay-what-you-want online offering, Underworld were offering all manner of artistic alms, from music to photography and writing.
'Our enthusiasm was undermined by the traditional way of putting out music,' Hyde says in a telephone interview from England. 'Here's an album: you spend a number of years crafting it, it comes out, it has to achieve a certain level on the charts or it's confined to the bargain bin, and that's three years of your life gone up in smoke.' Instead, Hyde says, he and Smith can put out anything from hi-definition recordings crafted over a number of months to material more 'raw and immediate' that can be released almost immediately.
'On our American tour, Rick was making things in his hotel room and releasing them the next day,' Hyde says.
One such early internet release was a series called Phone Strap featuring raw editions of songs whose more polished versions appeared on subsequent albums. The idea was to illuminate the creative process through which he works, says Hyde
'A download is as credible as a physical release,' he says. 'And the environment is more conducive to the creative process.'
