Recently, they collaborated with Gabriel Yared on the Breaking and Entering score, working with strings and a composer for the first time and taking their cityscapes-in-sound into new terrain. The next target was to finish a new album proper, for release in 2006. But fate intervened again when Danny Boyle invited them for a coffee. Hyde knew that the director who'd had the savvy to include Underworld's momentous "Dark Train" and "Born Slippy Nuxx" in his trailblazing film Trainspotting, was in the middle of making a $100m budget science-fiction film, Sunshine.
"We knew what was on his mind!" he laughs. "We came armed with reasons why we couldn't do the score and he suckered us into a screening. At that point, we were chomping at the bit to finish our record. But when we saw Danny's film we had to step back. A great piece of work - really great. What can you do when Hollywood comes calling? So, yes, he suckered us into that one..."
Having embraced a fresh, freeform approach to creativity, Underworld may never match their post-Trainspotting crossover success again. But they've done something better: they've embraced unpredictability. As Smith puts it, "It feels like we're heading in the right direction. Not that we're in the right place, or that we've arrived at a point. The idea is to keep it open, because you've got to feel like you can fall over and make mistakes. Or else, what? You're just safe. You're not making great work that happens to be popular - you're just populist."
I've seen Underworld umpteen times, but never as they were in the Cocoon club. One new song, "All These Things in Me", feels about as lush and sultry as men in their late forties can decently get. And in a set that unfurled in a flurry of peaks and Eureka! moments, Hyde's vocal on the belting church-techno gospel of "Peggy Sussed" is especially fitting. "Hallelujah!" he cries, as if he means it. Hallelujah, indeed: Underworld are saved.
* The RiverRun Project is available for download from
www.underworldlive.com. The soundtrack to 'Breaking and Entering' by Underworld and Gabriel Yared is out now on V2