Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1 has the exclusive premiere of the new High Contrast single featuring Tiesto and Underworld. “The First Note Is Silent” will be played during Annie Mac’s show tonight, which starts at 7 PM BST. The show should also be available for replay for one week following the broadcast on Annie Mac’s page via the BBC iPlayer.
High Contrast, aka Lincoln Barrett, co-wrote the songs “Scribble” and “Moon in Water” with Underworld on Barking.
Underworld released the soundtrack album Frankenstein: Music from the Play today on underworldlive.com.
You can purchase the album for immediate digital download here. You can also purchase a physical CD, which is scheduled to ship in early April.
The album has a 1 hour, 30 second runtime. Here is the tracklisting:
Don’t forget, today is also the live broadcast of Frankenstein at your local cinema, through the National Theatre Live program. If you missed today’s broadcast, there are still encore showings, as well as the reverse casting broadcast on March 24. Check the schedule at your local cinema for more details.
The National Theatre has produced a digital programme for Frankenstein which you can purchase for £3 here. The program includes several articles, production photos and videos, and cast and crew profiles. You can see a few of the photos on the NT Facebook page, although the program contains many more.
NT has also put a Frankenstein poster up for sale, which you can purchase in a few different formats here.
BBC 6 Music has an interview with Karl Hyde in which he discusses the Frankenstein soundtrack and how it came about, and about Underworld’s collaborations with Danny Boyle. You can listen to the interview here:
Underworld has also created several T-shirt designs inspired by Frankenstein. You can find these for purchase in the Underworld Shop.
Following a successful series of preview performances, Frankenstein began regular performances this week at the National Theatre.
Even better, Underworld have now announced that the soundtrack for Frankenstein will get an album release. You can visit the official Frankenstein Soundtrack web page to signup to be notified about when it will be available.
Underworld has also posted a track from the forthcoming soundtrack called “Dawn of Eden“, which you can listen to on SoundCloud.
The Underworld Live tour schedule for 2011 is beginning to shape up. As expected, Underworld is only playing festival shows this year. After a pair of warm-up dates in Miami and Malta in March, Underworld is scheduled for some solid European festival touring during the summer.
Their only London performance this year will be as headliners in an exclusive appearance at South West Four Weekender on August 27. As always, you can find all the Underworld Live dates on the Tour Dates section of Born Dirty.
Beautiful Burnout is a theatre show by Frantic Assembly and the National Theatre of Scotland. It explores the world of boxing in a Glasgow boxing ring. The soundtrack is composed of Underworld songs, including recent songs from Barking.
After a successful run in the UK, the show now comes to the US for a limited run at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York from Feb. 25 – Mar. 27. The New York Times has written an article about the production. Click here for more information and tickets, and watch the trailer for the production below:
Here are a bunch of Underworld press articles from the tail-end of the Barking tour.
Underworld chat about their new album Barking and take us Behind the Scenes
How do you prepare for a show and get yourself into the right mindset after spending lots of time traveling and little time sleeping?
Switch off, clear the head of preconceptions, open up to the possibility that everything could go counter to all our plans (wrong) & that the show will most likely be all the better for it. Let go of Ego & go with the flow. Then do some stretching exercises, drink hot spice tea with honey, concentrated ginseng & eat a banana. Then sing the very lowest notes I can for five minutes, Then focus only on Rick & Darren as we walk to the stage – don’t speak with anyone but them & clear the head one last time, hug, step out on stage & feel the electricity
The lyrics on Barking are refreshingly up front in the mix and you’re singing voice is more melodic than ever. Was there a conscious effort to sing less abstract/found poetry?
Yeah, that idea came from Rick. He suggested I give a few more clues as to what I’m singing about and kept pushing me to re-record the vocals until he got what he wanted.
I thought there’d be more instrumental tracks on the album, but he had different ideas!
The Self-Titled Interview: Karl Hyde of Underworld
The story of Underworld’s early days is a compelling one, so we asked singer Karl Hyde to relate the entire experience along with how the multi-medium artist recently came full circle with his first solo painting exhibition.
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Was Rick always the quiet one? Even your first group, Freur, seemed to position you as the frontman…
Well, Rick was the keyboard player, so that was the position he felt the most comfortable with—just driving the thing, and through the ’80s, he developed into an excellent producer and emerged from behind the scenes. He was the core of what Underworld became. It was very much his vision when it changed from Mk1 to Mk2 in the ’90s. He may be the quiet one, but he’s a huge, driving force at the core of the group.
A Conversation with Underworld: ‘Digital in Music is a Necessary Evil’
Are there specific tracks that came out of both approaches?
“JAL to Tokyo,” that we put out on a download album, Rick wrote that on a Japan Airlines track. And a track on Barking, “Hamburg Hotel,” was written exactly where you might expect. Rick’s working on a piece with David Lynch that he’s been working on mostly in his hotel room, and without digital that wouldn’t be possible.
U.K. Dance Music Stars Underworld Talk Barking
with Video: Underworld’s ‘Scribble’ Explained
“Every time I hear that song ['Louisiana'], I think, ‘People might not get this when I say it, but it’s kind of dark.’ I had written the verse and the chorus with a piano and it was in the archive, and I said, ‘I think there’s something here, something really strong and I think we need to make the rest of the tune,’ ” Hyde recalled. “So I said [to Rick], ‘Let’s try something radical. We’ll get into the room with you on piano, we’ll have a beat box, and I’ll have a microphone!’ ” he explained.
Underworld: Barking Mad: Reinvention as Self – Realization
Ramirez replaced Underworld’s drums with sounds from his own sample library (“We liked Underworld’s TR-909 sounds, but they sounded 10 to 15 years too late”) and created a breakdown using a hidden guitar part. “The breakdown didn’t exist initially, their arrangement was quite linear,” Ramirez recalls. “We wanted to keep that big, euphoric moment, so we stripped it down to Karl’s guitar, which was originally buried very low in the mix just as a thickening element. We really liked it, so we made the guitar into the main breakdown element. There was a middle eight-vocal bit, we put that over the breakdown. And Rick hated that bit! He was really against it. We had to fight with him to put it in. After a few months, he admitted he liked it.”
Underworld’s barking sound invades Los Angeles
Underworld’s contemplative method in creating dance tracks, draws from what Hyde called “a deep well of history” — from Smith’s childhood background in church music to contemporary acts such as noise-rock band HEALTH, which Hyde said he to admired.
How We Met: Rick Smith & Karl Hyde
Karl: The first time I met Rick was in the corridor of my flat in Cardiff. His mate was in the band I was in, and he came to repair our amplifier. As it turned out, it was full of knives and forks, which was why it didn’t work. I remember that expression on his face, that bemused look of “You’re an idiot,” which he still often has. After that, we needed a new keyboard player and we decided to ask him. We went looking for him on his birthday, and we ended up having this conversation with him while he was lying in the bath with his clothes on and a bottle of champagne in his hand. It’s funny, as that’s so unlike Rick, I’ve never seen him [in such a state] since.
Rick: When we met [in the late 1970s], Karl had recently finished art college and I was at the University of Wales doing electronics. A good friend of mine was in a band with him, and they were desperate for a synthesizer player. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time: I’d never really thought about a career in music. I think it was just unbelievable stupidity on my part. They were one of the biggest bands in Cardiff, and I’d just seen them do this gig on the roof of the student union, and it seemed so glamorous. Then after a month I thought, “Shit, what have I done?”
Calling us back to the dancefloor
Hyde recognises the value which comes from working with younger producers.
“When I was a kid, I’d listen to someone like Miles Davis and he was never afraid to bring in other artists, particularly younger ones who had a contemporary way of thinking. They also had an attitude which came with their age which you lose as you get older. You can then make a decision to either make older music, which usually tends to be more mature and sedate, or you can go out disgracefully.”
Underworld’s Karl Hyde talks to eGigs
So what can people expect at you run of UK live shows?
Ahh, you know a wild bit of improvisation, the music, the light, the video. What you can expect is probably the last Underworld only shows you’re going to get for a really long time. So, this is it. These shows now in the UK are the last Underworld only shows that we’re planning to do for a really long time. It’s going to be really interesting, no sadness, but a lot of joy. We’ll be playing to our own crowd, because next year it’s going to be full on festivals. Then at the end of next year we’ve got a lot of plans. The things that we haven’t been able to do for the last 20 years, that we’d like to spend some time focusing on. So these are the last Underworld only shows that you’ll see for a long time.
It’s always been their way. Going back to earlier times, Rick would play acetates in clubs and stand at the back to capture the sound and the response from the crowd. “With Barking we crafted all the tracks this way and then we set about finding people to collaborate with on the production. We then start this whole back-and-forth thing, jamming via the studio and online before deciding on a completed track.
Where there songs that changed dramatically from your version to the reworked version?
All the songs are our version. We worked on all of them right until the mastering was finished. Some of them changed greatly from the original idea or demo, some didn’t. But we were part of that change and don’t really look at the songs “our” versions and the “reworked” versions. We are used to material changing, developing, and evolving. A version of “Born Slippy” that we would play live now is nothing like the one we would have done in 1996, or like the record for that matter. For us, there is never really a moment when a song isn’t in a state of flux.
Karl Hyde GROUP WORK AND TRAINS
Underworld has recently updated the Underworld Shop with a lot of new merchandise (which would have been nice to have on the tour last year).
Some of the most prominent items are new music items. Rick’s Bungalow with Stairs album has been released as a bundle with the Exhibition Catalog from Karl’s What’s going on in your Head when you’re Dancing exhibition last year. Both items are limited editions (the catalog is numbered).
The last remaining stock of the 2007-2008 Live Here Now albums has been listed in the shop. This is the last chance to purchase them on CD.
Additional music products include an Oblivion with Bells bundle that includes a signed tour book, and several Barking bundles that include clothing items.
A small stock of Everything Everything Record Bags from 2000 has been found, and are going fast. They’ve also put out a number of new T-shirt designs, including a limited run of Scribble shirts. There are a number of additional accessories available too, such as cotton shoppers, Barking iPhone cases, and a Barking Buff.
Danny Boyle returns to his theater roots with the opening today of his stage adaptation of the classic novel Frankenstein. Currently in previews, the production officially opens on February 22 for a run at the National Theatre through April 17.
As director, Boyle has once again tapped Underworld to contribute to his project. Underworld is providing a “soundscore” for the play, presumably consisting of music, effects, and sound design. Underworld is collaborating with composer Alex Baranowski for the score, and Simon Gogerly is providing the sound mixing, which he also did for Barking. The Olivier Theatre is being outfitted with a Funktion One sound system, provided by John Newsham, Underworld Live’s sound engineer.
The play stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller (Sick Boy in Boyle’s Trainspotting), alternating the title roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature each night. Here is a review of one of the preview performances.
The show is already sold out for its currently announced run, but fortunately, it is part of the National Theatre Live program, and will be broadcast live to movie cinemas around the world. For the March 17 broadcast, Cumberbatch will play the Creature, and for the March 24 broadcast, Miller will play the Creature. International dates for the broadcast will vary. To find the venue nearest you playing the broadcasts, click here. The reverse casting performance will only be broadcast by some venues. Check with your venue to make sure.
After being mistakenly credited to Underworld last year, David Lynch’s debut single, “Good Day Today,” has now been officially remixed by Underworld on today’s release of the “Good Day Today” single.
The auteur and now-musician provided the vocals on the original track, but Karl Hyde has re-recorded the vocals for the “Good Day Today (Underworld Classic Remix)“.
The “Good Day Today” / “I Know” maxi-single is available on vinyl and CD in the UK and Europe. It is also available worldwide via digital download. You can purchase the downloads here:
