Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

ah, hell. For those that can't be bothered to click a link or explain why they hate prog.

Some characteristics of Prog Rock found in the Music of Underworld:

1)Long compositions (how about the Riverrun projects? Dark and Long EP tracks, half the tracks on STITI, etc etc).
2)songs made up of shorter parts: (Juanita/kiteless/to dream of love. Banstyle/sappys curry. Even Cups is like two separate songs. Again, perhaps both live improvs and the riverrun tracks qualify.
3) intricate and sometimes impenetrable narratives: if this ain't Karl's lyrics, i dunno what is. ;)
4) Concept LP: less apparent, although we have discussed the phjonecall communication theme that's woven throughout Beaucoup Fish before...depends on how conceptual you feel the ideas behind the other albums were. I've always sensed a underbelly of the city vibe to Dubno, but that's an opinion.
5) Prominent use of instruments unusual in rock music, including electronics, as well as unusual vocal styles: Again, the connection is clear. Vocoding, looped and distorted strings, weird percussion.
6) Inclusion of classical pieces - much of the instrumentation implies this.
7) An aesthetic linking the music with visual art: erm, Tomato? Live shows? Cover design? Karl's photography? Bueller...?
8) use of sound effects - crowd noises. City noises. Different language vocalizations. Samples.
9) Solo passages : though this is true of many bands, electronic or not, wouldn't you agree that a strong-point of UW has always been the great instrumental bits (which are often quite long and well developed rather than just loops) as well as the words...
10) Use of unusual rhythmic techniques, scales, tunings, time signatures: i'm thinking here of tracks such as Shudder, Ess Gee, Blueski, as well as some of the stuttering percussion on AHDO.

p.s. Stimpee, thanks for the fatherly advice. Now expand on your disassociations between the two. I'd especially be interesting in hearing why you would rather drink paint than listen to prog. i need proof, dammit!

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

Argh! It's all out of sync now cos you edited your post while I was writing mine. Then I edited mine while you were adding some more. Now it looks silly! I better add to it here instead then:-

One of These Days by Floyd is, imo, one of the first ever "hard electronic dance" tracks. The beat is there. The pulsing rhythm is there. The use of sequenced, repeated riffs (albeit with a little anarchy but hey, it was the 70s). Look to Rowla or, dare I say, Kittens for a comparison.

Ditto Sheep, I would say - you can taste Moaner, Nuxx and other of the harder UW tracks when you listen to it.

Yes were particularly good at the side-long (i.e. 20-25 minute) tracks and fusions of tracks that can be directly referenced to Juanita/Kiteless/TDOL.

King Crimson for their part, as you rightly added to you post, had the marvellous Mr Fripp who pushed musical boundaries at the time, but were also able to produce beautifully-worded electronic ballads along the lines of Witness.

Emerson Lake and Palmer were, again, in the earlier days, creating long, rhythmic electronic sequences with what were relatively new tools at the time. Again, I refer the honourable gentleman to such tracks as Rowla and Monkey Wink.

Tangerine Dream is probably the least obvious example - they were much more chilled/ambient electronica even then, and more the ancestors to IDM than anything else.


Oh. You have suffered much. You are delerious!

Now.

You explain why I am wrong :p

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

Thank you both. as for "You explain why I am wrong" and " Now expand on your disassociations between the two.", i don't see why I should have to, but I will say some more. After all, it was Jane's thread and I just wanted an answer, so it was good of you both to make the points you should have at the start of the thread.

While I can see a possible link during live shows, this is only because this is where most artists are allowed to improvise, and Underworld are no exception. However, they use programmed sequences and loops that are triggered and layered.

Tangerine Dream though have never been prog rock for me. Theyre inextricably linked to the krautrock movement from Germany (naturally) in the 70s. They have more in common with Kraftwerk, Can, Neu and Faust than the overblown pompous excesses of Yes and co. Krautrock has much more in common with Underworld because it is essentially an experimental rock movement that mixed with electronics. When I listen to Stereolab and Mouse On Mars I get a feeling for krautrock, and sometimes also when I listen to Underworld.

Why is it that whenever I think of prog rock, I see Spinal Tap performing "Stonehenge" though? Tap fans everywhere will know that this appeared on their 1975 concept album, "The Sun Never Sweats".

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

just cos you don't like prog bands doesn't mean UW are influenced by prog bands. take the way juanita : kiteless : to dream of love is structured, it has specific movements in it, each with its own expression. close to the edge, suppers ready, anyone? the way that the songs are structured, their length, their ability to take things that aren't that complicated and make it seem complicated and beautiful, this all fits uw and progressive rock bands. besides, progressive doesn't mean it has to be like yes and emerson, lake, and palmer. progressive is a relative term, it means on the egde, ahead of everyone else, and timeless. would you say that underworld is not any of those things?

ps: stimpee, i wish you'd stop letting your own feelings about prog rock make you get mad. we're not saying UW is like the prog bands, we're just saying they have things in common, the music is timeless, on the cutting edge, nobody else did anything like what they did before. just like none of the genesis albums sound alike, none of the underworld albums sound alike. they recreate themselves each time.

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

except for my aversion to all things Rick Wakeman I have yet to express my opinion. (the wiki suggests that prog rock was "dismissed as pretentious and overblown" by the late 70s and that "this attitude has remained common to the present day".
the only thing i was even remotely "mad" about was not getting a straight answer. i wish people would stop putting words in my mouth.
no i think now i disagree. timeless no, cutting edge? well not all unchartered territory is desired cutting edge. edge, yes? cutting, probably not. although the movement was certainly different in the beginning of the early 70s. By the time punk came on the scene in '76? hardly.

and now to reply to holden:

1)Long compositions- ok, this is a similarity.
2)songs made up of shorter parts: this is more part of 1) and maybe riverrun only falls into this category but those songs are also separate songs and not 6 or 7 parts of one song.
3) intricate and sometimes impenetrable narratives: im not sure what this means as far as prog rock goes. you could argue that norwegian black metal has impenetrable narratives.
4) Concept LP: no.
5) Prominent use of instruments unusual in rock music, including electronics, as well as unusual vocal styles: ive yet to hear a harpsichord solo, and electronics are hardly considered unusual.
6) Inclusion of classical pieces - none.
7) An aesthetic linking the music with visual art: this is commonplace and part of marketing these days everywhere.
8) use of sound effects - sampling is again rife. and underworld only use vocal samples AFAIK, which is not an "effect".
9) Solo passages : no.
10) Use of unusual rhythmic techniques, scales, tunings, time signatures: i see a tenuous link. unusual beats maybe, but techniques? use of scales perhaps.

So apart from the fact that UW have released some long songs, some of which have been in parts, its a bit of a stretch of the imagination. You're welcome to listen to your old prog rock albums (whether youre 15 or 43) but I dont think Underworld's name should be stained by prog rock comparisons.

once again, thank you for your replies. some of it I partially agree with and some of it not. for one, the "pretentious and overblown" bit of prog rock doesnt apply to Underworld, and I sincerely hope that they never do a concept album. I think they've been thru the daft phase in Freur and Underworld mk1.

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

prog rock isn't pretentious and overblown, and the wikipedia doesn't imply that it was. it implies that people think that about it, just because they don't understand it. just because something isn't particularly popular, doesn't mean it's bad.

also, if UW is totally unrelated to prog, how come all of us prog fans have showed up here after hearing UW? the results of the uw poll show that the most common 'other band' that we like is orbital, genesis, or moby. calling UW progressive isn't staining them, and i find it an insult to say that it is. there are many progressive genres outside of rock that are very very good (progressive jazz, progressive house, progressive metal, progressive-pop, etc.) . like i stated before, and you don't seem to understand, progressive doesn't mean yes or elp. it means that you're on the cutting edge and pioneering something no one else has done before. the root word of progressive is progress. that's what bands like The Beatles, Genesis, Brand X, Radiohead, and Underworld have done. they've paved the way to a new style of music. these 'progressive' bands are the most important bands of all, because whether their music was good or not, it made a signifigant impact on all music that came after it.

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

the soft machine - fourth has been talked about on underworldlive.com and was listed as one of karl's 10 favourite albums (unfortunately I don't have the entire list anymore)

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

I was gonna mention Krautrock, but Stimp already got to it...personally, I agree that krautrock is probably a little closer to UW than prog, but I enjoy them both. Personally, I see a lot of Brian Eno influence in UW, more so than really any other band or group I can think of. They're not like Orbital with an obvious Kraftwerk influence, but I see a lot of Can and Neu in Underworld's music, both of which were big influences on Eno, so there.

Personally, I love a lot of prog releases..."Lark's Tongues in Aspic", "Selling England by the Pound", "Brain Salad Surgery", "Fragile", and "H to He Who Am the Only One" (last one's Van Der Graaf Generator if you didn't get it) are probably my favorites. My entire senior year of high school and my freshman year of college I was obsessed with the stuff...in fact, when I bought "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" and listened to it for the first time it was in my car with my then-girlfriend in the passenger seat talking up a storm about this and that and getting pissed that I wasn't listening to her, because I was paying close attention to the music. I went through a phase with Underworld that's kind of like that, and now I'm really into a lot of New Wave bands (Talking Heads, XTC, Devo, Police, and whatever)...point is, the few progheads I know, I DO recommend Underworld too, because I think that the music, while not similar, would be enjoyed by someone with an affinity towards complicated and long music.

I think the thread isn't so much about the connection but rather how many of the UW fans here are into prog. And Rick Wakeman ain't that bad...either that or Stimp's just a really big Sex Pistols fan :p

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

the six wives of henry VIII is one of the greatest albums of all time. especially track 2, i think it's anne of cleves?

Re: Underworld and Prog Bands
 

Can I get you a nose-bag for that horse you're on?

Tell you what, Mr Moderator: why not provide us with a template of how you would like to see posts in threads. That way I am sure we will all bow down to your views and not post anything that falls below your meticulous standards in future. :)

I threw an open-floor question out there to see what it would produce. This is the Dirty Forum, not the Inner Temple Annual Mooting Competition.

Programmed sequences and loops that are triggered and layered... because they can. Because the technology exists now to allow that, whereas in the late 60s and early 70s it didn't. I fail to see how this negates the notion that influence for layering loops and sequences came from the prog electro/rock movement.

You are right about Tangerine Dream, although I disagree that it is the most obvious link to Underworld. The reason I gave the type of music I was trying to describe the nomenclature prog electronic/rock is because I don't think prog rock defines the elements I mean entirely. Later Yes and ELP might be described as "rock" - the earlier stuff certainly couldn't be. Yes, ELP, Pink Floyd, Genesis, almost all of these bands became pompous and overblown, as you say, once they started making more mainstream commercial stuff. Happily Tangerine Dream never did.


Because you just don't understand what I am on about, maybe? Spinal Tap was rock, not prog rock for a start. ;)