[negative1]

iinterviewer :
ok, now we've come to the other part of the
interview with karl of underworld,
the song we've just heard was headset, one
of the two songs, the other one was tiny clicks,
a bonus song, or bonus track on the two months
off single release and before that, like a swimmer,
the bonus track from the single, from one of the
singles dinosaur adventure 3d, which was also
released in several formats , but i think these
two songs, fit quite well into this relaxing mood,
the music, and also of the interview, so next up
is the second part of the interview with karl hyde
of underworld

karl the lyrics that you write, are sometimes yeah,
not really easy to understand , so to say for the,
non-english speaking people or even for the english
speaking people as they have a certain kind of flow,
that fits quite well to the rhythm but, doesn't always
make quite natural sense, so to say, so whats the
mystery behind the underworld lyrics, mostly then


karl : they are , but in the beginning of this, underworld made
a very clear decision that the group, we would change
the shape of the group, we'd put the drummer at the front
and the singer at the back, so that the singer would
be dicatated to by the drums rather than the other way
around, which is what normally happens, the drummer sits
behind the singer, and doesn't intefere, in this group,
the singer sits behind the drums, and doesn't intefere,
and sometimes you decide that you don't want to spoil
a little piece of music by using your voice on it, and
another time you think that i can find ways of enhancing
the rhythm by using the human voice, so you think ok,
what if i go off and sing, are you just going to sing
something repetitive or just sing any old thing that you
can just find in a magazine, or a word that you can sing,
no, what are you going to sing, well i dunno, what am i
gonna sing, and very early on , they were inspired by
two things, one was the playwright sam shepard, he wrote
a book called motel chronicles, which was a series of
small vignettes of just a description of a room, or of
a of a man driving down a road you know, there's no beginning
and no end, but there was a middle, i thought, i can do that,
and then there was a, there was a lou reeds 'new york' album,
at that was astonishing for me, i thought, how does this man
write conversational american, and i thought that well maybe
he sits in a cafe or bar, and he writes thing stuff that he
hears people speak, and then he goes and sings it, i could
do that, so i kinda combined the two and thats what i've
been doing for the last eighteen years, and then we've got
a piece of music inspires us to use the human voice,
i open one of my notebooks and you know, i see a , some
writing here that seems to feel right to the mood of the
music, and i start to improvise on the words, the words
on the page



i: the song hold the moth, holding the moth contains uh uh the
lyrics keep it simple, also um the , the most prominent part
of the remix by jesse rose , this is the concept and the motto
of underworld maybe

k: yeah, keep it simple, one foot goes down in front of the
other, yeah it kind of helps, you keep it simple, we can get
a bit complicated sometimes but we're trying


i: karl are you and rick going into clubs, and checking out
the dancefloor scene, so to say, in london or wherever you are
these days

k:we haven't been clubgoers for a long time, largely because
it all became all consuming really, its time that it takes
from us, it requires, and especially now, the internet radio
show, the internet tvs that we're working our way up to,
listening to other peoples music, and then the artworks,
and hundreds of photographs we produce and everyday and
we jam by the internet with our friends and tomato to
produce new books and art installations that are coming
up this year , there's a lot of work to do , in in preparation
for every year , so we're we're reliant on friends to keep us
in touch with whats happening, occasionally though we do
get to go out to a club , like you know we'll go to
the cocoon and see what's happening there, and if we're
on the road, we've got a day off in the city, and if
its got a good club , we'll go along to that club and
its important to hear dance music where its supposed to
be heard, otherwise you can get just a bit too far away
from it, and you start making things that don't relate
to the dancefloor anymore , yeah man i get embarassed,
too embarassed to dance on the dancefloor, yeah really,
did you find that weird, everybody i know finds that
really weird you know, and this is even weirder , that i
find that dancing on the dancefloor i'm embarassed because
i think that people are looking at me , i can do it on
a stage in front of a few thousand people , thats not
a problem , no thats really weird, thats what happens
when you're a farm boy that comes to the city (laughs) dear me



i: umm you usually talk about that the music of underworld
is a big mix of everything thrown, thrown in a pot and then
having it mixed up, so to say , is that the same with
oblivion with bells, or is there ah yeah, specific differences
then in the mix?

k: nothing more than any other album for us, really, this
is just a part of the journey, you know three download
only albums, the five twelve inches, the two film scores,
the triple live album that we released from a japanese show,
they've all contributed to, along with our love of german
club music and, and the web radio show, and all of that,
makes for a very eclectic album, but we've always made
very eclectic albums



i: some songs on the album maybe sound like they could also fit
on the cafe del mar sampler compilation, would you say yes to
it, and yeah um, if somebody would ask you for uh your song
to fit on this compilation or similar compilation is that ok?
or would you say no?

k: sure, but yeah in the early days , back in the early nineties
when the first tune from , can't remember what it was [note : an edit of 'thing
in a book' called 'second hand'] , got put on a cafe del mar,
that was big for us , really really big for us, and i remember
sitting on, on the beach in ibizia, you know listening to one of our
tunes coming, watching the sun go down , going yeah i get it ,
i get it, this is cool , yeah things become institutionalized dont they,
but that's why we have to keep moving on , and when things become an
institution , uh the last thing we want to do , is to be part of that
instituionn, its important to pack our bags and move out in the night



i: when you look at the actual music scene right now these
days uh, what uh can be the best uh or the most best possible
uh contribution of underworld right now then

k: trouble, laughs, in the sense that what is it, you know rick
and i have always been awkward, what is it, what are we trying
to do, we've never been purists never been simple to pigeon-hole
with what we do, even with freur doing their thing, it wasn't
really a pop group, it was trying to be a pop group, it wasn't
really an electronic group, it had a lot of electronics but it wasn't
a fashion group, there certainly were a lot of clothes, and you know,
what we often are is uncategorizable because there's always a little
bit of us that doesn't fit the pigeon hole and we've become even
more like that really , um where do we put them, well they fit
in underworld , but we're not quite sure where else to put them,
and we're making physical records , and we're making downloads,
and we're also giving away things for free, and its just like
oh my God, that's a bit of a nightmare isn't it, well no, not
really because its been working for the last few years for us,
and what we've wanted to do was to work with a label that could
together, we could embrace that idea, and bring it to more
people, that's really what we're about now, i think we're just
a bit more of a headache because there's so much more stuff for
people to get their head around, the people that work with us
i mean,



i: umm, when you're touring your live shows come together and
what is included in the live shows and how do you arrange it
and everything else then?


k: we're always improvised, um there's no setlist, we're improvising,
there are three of us on stage, just rick and me and darren price
who's been with us for a long long time, we walk out on stage ,
make the decision about the first tune as we're walking onto the
stage, and let the crowd tell us , lead us and what should happen
next , just as dj's taught us to do really, and then we improvise,
just as jazz musicians taught us how to do and be live, you know
those are live instruments, just because the gibson les paul, and
there's a mixing desk, and a macintosh, and a microphone, and a
these are, they're all instruments , they're all live instruments,
and we use them to improvise, and to go, to go into wherever the
crowd takes us, lots of visuals , and improvised live cameras, on stage,
and films generated from our company tomato, the lights the sound,
everything is improvised, we just go out on tour with a crew that
we've been with some of them for twenty years, and say its great
to be on tour with you, have a good show, you know, and they do
whatever they want to really,

transcript by : -1