Tag: underworld

Get This!

Beaucoup Beats

Craig McAllister

If it’s mind-expanding, widescreen electronica yr after, you need look no further than Underworld.

Not necessarily the dark and longform tracks that make up the album and associated singles around Dubnobasswithmyheadman, although everything surrounding that particular release is out of this world. Nor the airbrushed and spacious ambience that wraps itself tightly around that record’s follow-up, Second Toughest In The Infants, even if such a record would see you alright for a good few months of non-stop spinning and reappraising. And not even the fantastic, Donna Summer-filtering King Of Snake; a relentless headbanger in anyone’s urban dictionary, and then some.

In recent weeks I’ve found myself returning to and wearing down the groove on an already-worn b-side, golden plunder plucked from the racks of an Irvine charity shop, a rare feat these days when anything black, round, lacquer-cut and decent – that’s the key – has been snaffled by switched-on staff or overpriced to oblivion and left to grow tatty in the subsequent months.

For exactly £2, I picked up a well-spun copy of Bruce Lee, the fifth and final single released to promote third album (their fifth, really, if you’re being picky) Beaucoup Fish. Releasing a fifth single from an 11-track record seems a wee bit desperate, so it’s not surprising to note that the single – even in its remixed form – didn’t actually chart. How many copies were pressed is anyone’s guess. Not as many as Born Slippy or Rez, that’s for sure, but for anyone who invested at the time, they were rewarded not only with the glitchy, twitchy and in-your-face, filling-loosening Micronauts remix of Bruce Lee, but also, on the record’s b-side, the groovy and propulsive (and bit of a mouthful) Salt City Orchestra remix of album opener Cups.

Underworld – Cups (Salt City Orchestra’s Vertical Bacon Vocal)

Oh man! This is where the record’s real action is. It’s light and airy, audible sunshine compared to the electrical storm brewing on the a-side, properly forward-pushing and jet-streamed pre/post-club music that would sound equally tremendous in an amber-lit West End bar as it would soundtracking an August sunrise in San Antonio.

It’s the bassline that hits first. A walking and pulsing half-cousin of Beat It with better manners. Then it’s the synth washes and faint hit of saxophone that grab you. Or is it a girl’s voice? It’s hard to say, it doesn’t really hang around. And it’s the hi-hat action, spraying away like a can of Ellnette in the seventies, never ending and hypnotic, your head bobbing and limbs loosening in subconscious time to its airy spritz. It’s also the pinging electro squiggles sprinkled on top, a marker of loads of late ’90s electronic music, but far more tastefully administered here. It’s also the way everything drops out towards the end and the potential of a whole other tune appears teasingly before the fade-out. Most of all though, it’s those trademark stream of conscious vocodered vocals, half-whispered lyrics, that, as it turns out, are wholly suggestible and full of eyebrow-raising double-entendres whenever you can make them out. Worth a Google in their own right, if that’s your sorta thing.

Underworld, as they continually prove to be, are somewhat timeless. Expand yr mind.

 

Hard-to-find

The Grand Old Loop Of Bjork

Craig McAllister

Human Behaviour by Bjork is, perhaps unbelievably, now 31 years old. A massive, booming and echoing timpali rhythm attached to a dry-as-a-bone rattlesnake shake percussion, it sounds like an amalgamation of smoky Parissienne jazz club and total jungle funk, topped off with a lyric inspired by watching a David Attenborough documentary and delivered as only Bjork can. Stop and listen and contemplate it for a moment. It’s a bit of a forgotten classic, I’d say.

Bjork – Human Behaviour

Originally written while Bjork was still in the Sugarcubes, it was wisely held back until the singer inevitably broke free. Quite what Sugarcubes, with shouty Einar and his expressive yet rudimentary trumpet might have done to it is anyone’s guess, but by the time Bjork had a solo record ready for release, Human Behaviour had been lined up as the lead single with which to promote it.

Her voice, always the key magical ingredient in Sugarcubes is perhaps even more out there on here. She whispers some of the verses, her Icelandic voice edged in Londonisms, then rasps and glides her way into those signature high registers, free-flowing and joyous and unlike anyone else on the planet. There are plenty of unique female vocalists scattererd across the genres, but I bet most of them wish they had the tone and timbre of prime time Bjork. There are little sections in Human Behaviour where her voice causes my skin to goosebump in exhilaration. Adele ain’t never done that for me, no siree.

Does Human Behaviour pre-date trip hop and all of that genre’s signifiers? It certainly rides the zeitgeist of 1993’s underground to overground sub-culture, but whereas those contemporaries chose to blunt things up and slow things down, Human Behaviour is forever propulsive and travelling, a head-nodding linear groove with music for the feet and lyrics for the head. Much of the track is built around a few looped seconds of an obscure 1970s jazz sample – of course – twisted and tweaked and dubbed and dropped into position by go-to producer Nellee Hooper.

Ray Brown Orchestra – Go Down Dying

I’d wager that few people if any were familiar with the Ray Brown Orchestra‘s Go Down Dying, but it popped up, recommended to me on a shuffling Sp***fy playlist recently and, appearing out of context, it blindsided me. The intro, filmic and groovy, with the suggestion of danger between the notes; where did I know it from? Bjork’s Human Behaviour, that’s where. A quick internet check confirmed it, but by then, Go Down Dying was taking on an unexpected life all of its own. Its fantastic shuffling groove, part Reni, part Roy Budd really carries it. The brass floods into it like a slow-spreading, discordant brassy rash, all honeyed hue and rasping anxiety. There’s even a riff-copying electric guitar that stings its way offa the grooves with all roads leading to Portishead. By the time the flutes have fluttered their way to the outro, Dead Man Dying sounds nothing like Human Behaviour at all, save for that keen-eared loop of Nellee Hooper’s within the first few seconds. Clever folk, those in-demand producers, and for good reason.

Underworld, another of those zeitgeist surfing acts took Bjork’s original and lengthened it to an impressive and essential 12+ minutes.

Bjork – Human Behaviour (Underworld mix)

The polyrhythms that kick start it, all falling over themselves processed beats and steady tambourine jangle give way to the exact sort of rhythm track that helped make Dubnobasswithmyheadman one of the best – the best? – albums of the decade. It’s relentless and percussive and simple enough to allow for Bjork’s extraordinary voice to soar above it. Bereft of the Ray Brown sample, the lyrics become easier to hear.

If you ever get close to a human

and human behaviour

be ready to get confused

There’s definitely definitely definitely no logic

to human behaviour

yet it’s so irresistible

They’re terribly moody…then all of a sudden turn happy

But to get involved in the exchange of human emotions

Is ever so satisfying

And still the beat goes on. Electronic whirrs. Random sampled, walkie-talkied voices fading in and out. The beats start becoming emphasised every few bars. Cymbals splash. Bleeps, bloops, synthy filters weave in and out. The rolling and tumbling electrobeats of Mmm Skyscraper I Love You revisited. And Bjork returns. And still the beat goes on.

Back in 1993, it was de rigeur that acts spread a variety of remixes across the single releases. What a scoop to get this one!

 

 

Cover Versions, Get This!, Hard-to-find

Born Skanky

Craig McAllister

Them targetted ads, man. You don’t get nuthin’ for free. While you’re scrolling obliviously through social media, Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s analytics monkeys are harvesting your data; your likes and dislikes, the length of time you interact with something, the speed you scroll past, whether or not you click a follow-on link. It’s happening right now as you read – or don’t read – this. It’s all fed into the system and the next thing y’know, your timeline is full of desirables. You knew that already though. Mention car insurance to your significant other and sure as 4th gear follows 3rd, you’ll start to notice car insurance ads on your socials. I was tasked with booking Taylor Swift tickets a month or so ago and almost immediately I was being bombarded with ads for ‘the last remaining’ hotel rooms in Edinburgh. Turns out they were too.

I’m a sucker for well-placed social media marketing. In fact, the moment an eye-catching ad makes itself known, my PayPal account will be engaged before I’m fully aware of what I’m doing. The past couple of months has seen me buy a cord ‘shacket’, trainers, a sweat shirt, a 7″ EP with 4 reggaefied versions of James Brown’s Night Train and (imminently) this…

Sokabe Keiichi & Inokasira Rangers – Born Slippy

Yes! It’s a cover of Underworld’s relentless clattering techno thumper, used to great effect in Trainspotting and as such, the sound of 1996. You didn’t know you needed a cover of this, did you? Like all the best cover versions, it takes the original’s blueprint, throws it away and recasts the track in totally new light. This particular Born Slippy is slowed down, reworked and reborn as a laidback lilting rocksteady reggae cut from the sunbaked beaches of, eh, Tokyo-by-way-of-Kagawaken. It’s great, of course.

Off-beat organ, chicka-boom drums and scratch guitar, all reggae staples present and correct, but topped off with Keiichi Sokabe’s amazingly cod-Anglified vocals. “She was a lipstick boy, she was a beautiful boy…Let your feelings slip, boy, but never your mask, boy…Look at me, mum, squatting pissed in a tube hole on the Tottenham Court Road…Lager, lager, lager, shouting…” There’s a great wee slide guitar part that wheezes itself off and out in to the ether to introduce the “She smiled at you, booooy!” line, the Edge recast as a dreadlocked Japanese roots rocker. Listen out for it.

Turns out this was a track first released in 2017. The internet being the massive pool of never-ending music it is means that it may well have passed you by in the ensuing 6 years since. Luckily for all, Parktone Japan has just reissued it on 7″. It’s limited, so be quick.

In his day job, Keiichi Sokabe is vocalist in cult Japanese act Sunny Day Service, a band that’s never far from a 12 string jangle or well-worked harmony, and nothing like the track above. It turns out it’s the Inokasira Rangers who are the skank heads here. Back in 2016, the 4-piece ‘Rangers dispensed with a vocalist to play fantastic instrumental versions of the punk/new wave catalogue as authentic as The Upsetters at Black Ark with Lee Perry at the controls. The tracks coulda been straight out of 1972 or 2022, such is the Japanese approach to authenticity. A curio perhaps, but one worth further investigation. Want to hear Geno or Neat Neat Neat or What Do I Get? given similar treatment to Born Slippy above? Of course you do. The internet is your friend…

 

Get This!, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

(Senti)Mental Machine Music.

Craig McAllister

Although it was actually released at the end of January, 1994, this week sees the 20th (20th!!) anniversary reissue of Underworld‘s ‘dubnobasswithmyheadman‘ LP. Given the kind of music Plain Or Pan normally features, you might be surprised to learn that I’m really looking forward to this. Indeed, my excitement might only be surpassed if The Queen Is Dead or Blonde On Blonde were to be suddenly released as 5 CD super-deluxe box sets featuring scores of previously unheard session outtakes and retailing for a tenner. Along with those two releases, dubnobasswithmyheadman holds a place in the higher echelons of my favourite albums of all-time list.

undworld dub

It’s dance music, Jim, but not as we know it.

For starters, dubnobasswithmyheadman dispenses with the notion that dance music is all about the ‘now’ – it may well be the first dance album with genuine longevity. In that respect, it opened doors for Leftfield and the Chemical Brothers. But to these ears, both those act’s various LPs now seem a tad dated. Twenty years on, dubnobasswithmyheadman still thrills.

Opening track Dark & Long is exactly that:

What is ‘Dance music’ anyway? Dark & Long could almost be Joy Division.

dubnobasswithmyheadman sounds nothing like its ‘contemporaries’. There’s none of that generic hysteric female vocal that was prevalent on every release at the time. And sure, it has it’s four-to-the-floor moments, but nothing as crass as the handbag house hits of the day that cluttered up a gazillion Ministry Of Sound compilations and their ilk. There’s not a James Brown sample or a “Baby! Baby! Baby!” anywhere near it.

At times the album sounds as if it’s running on the same sort of energy that pulses through I Feel Love. Elsewhere it sounds as if someone’s turned every knob on every keyboard all the way round as far as they’ll go, drowning the listener in a bath-full of acid squelches and road drill beats.

Occasionally it sounds stoned and other-wordly. River Of Bass could almost be Can, with its repetitive guitar riff and whispered vocals.

undworld1

dubnobasswithmyheadman is a true one-off – it’s percussive, it’s relentless and it ebbs and flows like all good albums do. It’s got guitars on it! Lovely chiming, echoing, layered guitars that fade in and out when the mood arises. The vocals are a one-off; half-spoken snippets of overheard conversations and cut ‘n paste phrases, mirroring the cut-up, random cover art.

“I see Elvis!”

“‘I’m just a waitress’, she said.’”

“Don’t put your hand where you wouldn’t put your face.”

undworld3

Cowgirl is perhaps the most instantly-accessible track.

Nagging and creeping, like a virus worming its way under your skin it’s a full-on four-to-the-floor smash, glo-stick techno at its longest, loudest and best, a precursor for sure to the band’s big Lager! Lager!Lager! breakthrough hit a couple of years later.

You can take each track in isolation and get something from them, but the best way to listen to dubnobasswithmyheadman is to bunker down and swallow the whole in one go. In amongst the rollin’ and tumblin’ sequencers and rat-a-tat percussion there’s a fluidity to it and because of that it’s been a recurring soundtrack to my cycling, speeding me up hills that I have no inclination to go up, whisking me back home when I’d rather take the last few miles a bit easier. Now and again I’ll hear the sound of the chain snake its way through the sprocket bleeding into the mix and this just adds to it.

When it comes out this week with all manner of weird and wonderful remixes, lost tracks and souped-up remastering, it’ll help me get many extra miles in on my bike.

  undworld2