Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Big Bear - holy shit this is amazing. In my top 5 for the entirety of Drift.

also loving Another Silent Way - Better Than Diamonds.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Did anyone get the PDF with the digital download? Is it worth it? Be cool to purchase if you get a PDF of the whole book.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

The great thing about this process is that we'll always have the previous versions, if that's what we prefer.

That was definitely going through my mind as I was trying to grind through the box set analysis, especially the new tracks. Trying to listen to and absorb all the new tracks was very much like listening to a new album for the first time. And it was in stark contrast to the way we got all the other tracks, getting a week to digest it by itself on its own merits and then evaluate it again later as part of a larger collection, and then maybe within the context of a curated collection (the sampler).

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

One other thing I noticed, is that they finally standardized on "Custard Speedtalk" for the track name (instead of "Custard Speed Talk". And they issued a change to all retail platforms that changed the track name in Episode 3 from "Speed Talk" to "Speedtalk". I didn't realize they could do that.

And check out this cool retail display window that Beat Records setup in a Shibuya record store:

A post shared by on Jan 01, 2017 at 12:00pm PDT

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

A question I kept asking myself as I was trying to sequence an alternate album out of all this was if it made sense on the continuum of previous underworld albums. was it something I’d expect from them after not hearing a thing in 3 years, and not just “dubman’s favorite tracks” (even though it was absolutely kind of that). I already knew most of these inside out, so trying to dissolve parts of that familiarity to make my best plausible underworld album of 2019 took pretty much all day.
“Big bear can’t be second. I know you wanna hear it ASAP but big bear’s not a second-track track. It’s a punchy number in the last third”
“You WILL have a long middle one and you WILL make it flow right on either side of it. Now step back and see if it makes actual sense with the rest”
“I know you thought Seven Drone Music would be the perfect closer but it’s not quite closing. It needs a short... something... to bring it over. Like what ‘Witness’ does in Lovely Broken Thing”
ALL. DAY.
I got there though.

...I think

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

What's in the booklet of the single CD?

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

My faves of the tracks are:
Big Bear
Doscentitos
Two Arrows

Least fave:
One True Piano (way too empty and boring)

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I did. But I bought the Digital Sampler Edition from the UW Store. I imagine the PDF mirrors the book with the box set as it is 41 pages and touches on all of the releases in order along with a long form interview, gear notes, video notes, and more. I haven't done a deep dive - but really looking forward to seeing this in print.

UPDATED: Looking at the preview video UW posted last week, I can confirm the the PDF included with the high-res Sampler Edition sold direct from the UW store is the same as the box set book.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I made the mistake of ordering from Qobuz. I only saw recently it was up on the UW store digitally for cheap. Spent double the price with no PDF.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Im in the UK and my cd ( signed on the back) , vinyl which has a nice weight and is very yellow and my tickets to wembley all arrived yesterday!

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

imagine being able to tell the Dirts from 2003 that Underworld was gonna release a quintuple album in 2019 and it was pretty much all gonna be great

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

AND
that they'd release a new track every week leading up to it, and every week they didn't they opened up the archives.


but then you'd have to tell them 5 points wasn't a part of it

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Imagine the speculation between 2005 and 2008 when they repeatedly said that's the kind of thing they were going to do, and then didn't.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

They said a lot of things
Like how they were going to hand off Underworld so that it didn’t end when they were done with it.
It’s all art-world, what-if comics fugue talk
Then they actually do it and it’s like whaaaaaaat

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

well there's a big difference in the way music is consumed now as opposed to then. I think the Riverruns were hurt by the fact that they weren't in stores, weren't on iTunes, you had to go through a clunky storefront that was down a lot of the time. maybe the fact that it was just one continuous track turned some people off too. I have no idea what the sales were, I know we all went nuts over it but I never got the sense that the public at large was that interested. It kinda made sense that by '06 they were more focused on the next CD


nowadays it seems pretty easy to finish something and have it out across the board on streaming services the next day, people don't really listen to CDs much anymore and the idea that an "album" has to be something between 40-80 minutes is kind of outdated. so the time is right for this sort of thing.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I for one am extremely pleased that my other favorite group now makes 8 hour "albums"

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I've always thought that the delivery system and what I perceived to be Underworld just being cheap severely hurt Riverrun's appeal. The Underworld website itself has to the best of my recollection never been particularly intuitive, always seeming to be hand-coded (or might as well be), and the Riverrun era especially. Zip files and PDFs you had to buy on a dodgy platform, it was all extremely inelegant. And the accompanying physical products were mainly remixes! That for the most part sucked! And the major physical release of the time was Live in Japan, the kind of product we'd been begging for, and it was limited only to that region. In other words, the group did everything they could to make Riverrun and its attendant content as unbuyable as possible to all but the most hardcore fan.

These days there's a much better technological apparatus in place for this kind of thing. Social media, streaming, YouTube, all sorts of tools to deliver any sort of content at all. And the advent of the deluxe edition boxset offers a physical product that's far superior to a traditional CD and jewel case (NIN refuses to make CDs ever again, supposedly, moving strictly to vinyls and downloads). As ever Underworld were ahead of their time, but Drift takes judicious advantage of all this.

I suspect that if Underworld repackaged Riverrun it would be worth the effort. It remains a kind of holy grail for new Underworld fans who weren't around to get it the first time. Imagine a boxset with full size artwork, books of jam, high fidelity sound, liner notes, etc.? And promoted properly and enhanced through all the channels mentioned above. It'd be marvelous.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

always thought the intention was to repackage it for the deluxe edition of either AHDO or (more likely) OWB. perhaps they want to spend some time to remaster them? because they still do sound like lossy MP3s with some notable audio glitches. maybe the wavs sound better.
still remember around the time of Draft 7.30 when half of their fans were patiently waiting for them to make accessible music again

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

i'd be more excited for the possibility last week, before i read that they're still annoyed about how rushed it was.

which, ????. but, perfectionists.

i like how loose it is and wish they'd sort of embrace that more, but oh well.



i MiSs AmBeR, tHeY sHoUlD dO tHaT aGaIn
then they up and called their first two albums cheesy. loved it. IDIOTS.
though tbf they did also get a release of 89-93 tapes, so, good for them. idiots.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Just FYI, Drift Series 1 Sampler Edition will be available through US distribution and retail channels on Nov. 8. This includes the CD, Vinyl, and Limited Edition Vinyl.

And the Drift Series 1 box set will be available through US distribution and retail channels on Dec. 22.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I wasn't just referring to Riverrun, but interviews in, I think, 2008, where Karl was talking about how these days it was easy to just knock out tracks, release them online and maybe a 12", and move on, without having to tie them to an album. People were expecting it to be You Do Scribble and Bamboo and stuff. And then it just never happened, and two years later we got Barking instead.

I'm surprised it's taken this long for bands to be doing this kind of thing, though. Lots of groups, right back to the '00s, said things like "we're not doing albums anymore" and ended up... carrying on doing albums. There have been relatively few groups who've realised that, actually, the 10 track 40-60 minute album every three years isn't a restriction anymore. So yeah, we have this, and Autechre's last couple of releases, and FSOL just being baffling with all their difficult-to-classify self-released things, but most other established artists still seem to be sticking to the old-fashioned ways still.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I like albums though

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Me too, I listen to this disc by disc, not all at once. (same with Autechre's latest, though lol @ even those being 2 hours apiece)

I do think they're getting away from the album 'format' (sampler aside) - it doesn't *quite* feel like Underworld just dropped 6 new albums, as the discs are structured differently than their LPs are (for example "Threat of Rain" is not something you'd ever hear on one of their albums). But that's sort of a good thing, like most people on this board I think the true spirit of Underworld comes through on the early EPs, the deep cuts, the Riverruns or that one track they played one time but for some reason never released. Drift is pretty much all stuff like that. To me the difference here is not so much the decision to just release everything as it is the decision to finish it all and let it stand on its own. When they announced this project I was worried that you'd hear a lot of stuff that sounded like demos or were incomplete (like the bonus material on the Super Deluxe albums) but the level of detail on these tracks is astounding. They don't necessarily feel like 'albums' in the vein of say BF or OWB but I think this approach plays more to their strengths.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Oh, trust me, I have no problem with UW dumping 6 discs worth of music on us every other year whatsoever. Count me in.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Ha! Glad to see some Autechre shout outs in this community - my other favorite group as well since '97, though UW was first in '96 and still tops the list. :)

Hope we hear about plans for AHDO and OWB sets before too long, and they are still in the works during Drift Series 2 time period.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I have a few notes. First, "Doscentitos" was indeed a typo. The correct title, Doscientos, has been pushed out to all digital services now. Not sure how it's going to show up on the box set though.

Speaking of the box set, the signed and numbered copies were limited to 650 copies.

So, the exclusive part was going to the 24-bit audio. But the label insisted on 24-bit being available elsewhere. So, the "exclusive" thing has been corrected on the UW Store and removed from the listing, and it also has the correct cover art to indicate the Sampler now too. But, AFAICT, the PDF is not available elsewhere.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Thanks for the updates.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

I'm still waiting for my CD copy. Is the booklet the same as the vinyl's inner sleeve graphics?

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Seems odd at this late stage - but I don’t think we’ve seen any samples of what the physical box set is going to look like...

Has anything surfaced yet?

UPDATE: Simon Taylor says photos of the box set are coming soon - once they receive it.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Received my copy of the Japanese 2CD edition of the DRIFT Series 1 Sampler Edition.

Track list and times are as follows:
DISC 1
Appleshine 8:37
This Must Be Drum Street 4:26
Listen To Their No 5:44
Border Country 6:51
Mile Bush Pride 1:34
Schiphol Test 4:43
Brilliant Yes That Would Be 6:04
S T A R (Rebel Tech) 3:45
Imagine A Box 6:02
Custard Speedtalk 9:45

DISC 2
Low Between Zebras 2:38
Toluca Stars 9:56
Doris 4:13
A Moth At The Door 1:49
Dune 10:27
Hundred Weight Hammer 3:58
Do Breakers Trip 3:19
Molehill 5:36

The second CD is also a continuous mix (similar to the standard Sampler Edition) hence the different track times. IMO, it works really well as a mix.

The release comes in a trifold wallet case with a small sticker, the standard english insert (I'm assuming...) and a second insert with the lyrics for Disc 1 only.

The standard english insert is very different from the PDF booklet included with the official high-res download from the UW store, leading me to believe that the PDF mirrors the book included with the box set.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Appleshine Continuum feels much less energetic to me in the final mix than as it did on Drift 2. Love that we have a few versions of some of these tracks

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Just got an email from the store saying that my card was declined for the boxset order - I was issued a new card number between when I placed the order and now. Fortunately the store gave me the option of updating the payment details. Fingers crossed that this means the boxset is shipping soon.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

got a phone call for a potentially fraudulent charge from "tmstores", but i approved it. checked my acct at the UW store and it says "shipped on november 14th", which, lol, but it sounds like they're finally going out.


$106 though, fuck.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Same thing happened to me! I wish they'd charge these things when we make the pre-order, but maybe that's just me.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

PayPal payments went out immediately, it's only the debit card option that is going through now (I get paid tomorrow and was really hoping they'd hold off until then before charging so I have to confirm my payment at midnight now!)

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Good to know that paypal gets pulled immediately. I got bit by the delayed payments on the STitI boxset and ended up missing out on the shirt because of it.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

This week on the UK album charts:

Underworld - Drift Series 1 (68)

later
-1

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Their lowest charting album, although probably not surprising given a comparatively low-level marketing campaign and the unconventional nature of the release.

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Unboxing the box. Looks stunning, but with the whole Drift Series 1 cover art something went wrong. What is that huge white space in it?? Totally looks like if something is missing. The only postive thing is the missing image is the dog. And it give the CD and vinyl a more unique artwork.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJrC7W58Gag&t=0s

Re: DRIFT Series 1 - New album, Nov 1, 2019
 

Oh and finally I got the single CD. Sadly the paper is very thin, but at least the case is tri-fold, not just a cheap two-fold case. But again, the booklet is a big let down. This leaflet is way too empty. I expected the cover arts for each of the songs as the booklet pages.