Quote:
Originally Posted by Disco dave
...after Darren left, the shows were simply not nearly as good at they were pre 2000
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I think there's truth to this, to a degree, though I'd argue that both live
and in the studio, the music of Underworld has been less potent without Darren. Less "woofta-dufta" and more "nimby-pimby", as Rick might have once put it.
Back then, Darren was right young and perhaps even a bit daft, especially in contrast to the older and wiser Rick and Karl. (After all, with age comes wisdom, as they say.) So, there was some tension there, with the light-to-moderate slagging that occasionally went back and forth, particularly between Rick and Darren. For example, Darren would take the piss because of his youth and relative inexperience to actually creating electronic music (
not DJing, which of course he essentially taught Rick how to do). And then Darren would fire back at the "old folk" (meaning Rick and Karl) because they were set in their ways, not hip to what was happening outside Lemonworld, or some other such, true or not.
But this tension actually worked for the band, like other bands that have come and gone since. (Dwayne Goettel-era Skinny Puppy comes to mind, particularly with the acute personality issues between Ogre and cEVIN Key.) It worked in the way that the music was more intense, more aggressive and more adventurous (to my ears, anyway), as the band's tensions were released through their collective artistic output.
So, to me, that's the downside of the current situation. Less intensity. But I think the upside would be that Rick and Karl probably find their current working situation more comfortable and more enjoyable. And Darren, on his relative own, likely feels the same way.
However . . . . .
I've got to point out that seeing Rick, Karl and Price at the Hollywood Bowl in what I believe was September 2007 was one of the best shows I've ever seen. I was seated up a ways, and I was dancing on the steps the entire time. Needless to say, it was an incredible night, very woofta-dufta, and very much pure Underworld.
Hence, I'm not at all saying the boys don't have it anymore, because they very much do, when they choose to employ it.
...And to Darren's credit, I was there for his set at Coachella 2003, where I was just as blown away with his talent as a DJ as I was when I saw him with Underworld. (And, of course, I went mental again with Underworld's performance the following evening.)