[negative1]

i: talking about the bit that tomato, the design project, and
the company that you've started , is it uh still important for
you to uh and carry on with it or um do you think that other people
can take over this project and you are going another way
with underworld or with projects then?

k: in the beginning it was important for lots of different
reasons, one it was important to be in conversation with
other artists that didn't do music , that didn't care about
a career in music so they were free to say what they wanted
its wonderful to get their opinions , and then of course
it was um, very good that the guys who were making, started
to make tv commercials asked us to make music for those
commercials because on a creative level that's something
that we always wanted to do , that might seem very odd,
but we actually had wanted to always do it, because we
wanted to bring some good positives sounds into peoples
home and that might sound arrogant , you know its a
naive ideal of ours , also it gave us money to eat and
pay the rent and not have to compromise our music
and that was paramount to in the development of underworld,
so then we could just do the music that we wanted to do,
and not think about as a career, and the fact that it
became a career, a mistake really (laughs)

i: back in the beginning of the days, of the acid house scene in the uk,
how was the scene back then, compared to now , what were the basics,
uh as they've started and as you've started making music and how did it
influence you then,

k:the ones that i've went to, and the ones that've started hearing acid house
on pirate radio and that was really exciting because it was outsider stuff
it was exciting because people were making records they were putting on
parties, they were illegal, they were doing what when they felt like it,
and as long as nobody was getting hurt , they were doing things outside of
the, the acceptable structure, well thats music, thats art to me , its like well
push the boundary, and pirate radio was putting out acid house , people
were saying you can make a record and you can put it out, and if people dance to
it , you can sell it from the back of a car, and thats what we're doing
[note : 'mother earth' was sold from out of the back of a car] and that's
how our career was kind of growing, and then these parties were, they were
really exciting, they were like the best pink floyd gig that we, that i'd
never been to a pink floyd gig , but i've heard about them, from the
older kids, that's what like to me a fantastic gig should be like, great
lights, you know there were these rooms dressed in amazing ways, there
were ,some of them had fun fairs in them, and the sound system was
fantastic, and it was real value for money. and they went on for hours,
hours and hours, and it was like what an amazing gig that was, should't
gigs be like this, and that became an inspiration to us, thats how we
felt we wanted to be, and we wanted to be the band to could do that, and we
wanted to be a part, the fact that it got large meant of course, that we had great
opportunities , and we got to travel the world, we got to play in
castles, and on mountains, and on beaches, and on roman amphitheaters, the
kind of places that rock bands never got to play normally, so it was just,
just amazing , and we felt that hey, lets have a mad idea and do it, and
that was really felt like being kids, and something we always wanted to do,

i: was it actually a kind of strange feeling, or weird feeling that you
have became a , yeah a part of the generation ecstasy , and uh maybe the
uh and also the drug problem and everything ,going raving

k: i don't know, i never did drugs, and honestly, isn't that hard to
believe, i mean, even today, people say to me, oh my gosh, to be completely
out of on stage, umm, i never was out of it on stage, uh my drug of choice
was alcohol, for many many many years, and that stopped ten years ago,
but right now it wasnt hard to be , it wasn't hard to be around people
that were doing things like that, because they all got loved up ,
you know there was no violence, you could go to these events and that
was a shocker going to the first raves in the eighties, and and and it
was like wow, you could instantly feel it was a very non violent environment
and i'd grown up as a kid, going to gigs, where people ended up getting
beating each other to a pulp cause they were drunk and violent,
and so this was an amazing thing really

i: was the movie trainspotting reflecting the scene back then with the
born slippy success and everything else

k: yeah, i think it did, i really think it did, i think its extraordinary
people talk about the summer of love, in the sixties , and i think its
trainspotting and born slippy together, hit a moment, that
still remains really deep for a lot of people,


i: you've already started very early, yeah to uh include the internet
and new digital medias so to say in your activities like, um a home
page and a radio show live transmissions from your studio and everything
else, um was it actually more something you've benefitted from or was
it something that you regret after all these years and would you see
just this thing continuing in the future from now on?

k: the internets a fact, and we can, we can fight it, an be consigned
to the history, or we can explore it and find out what happens,
and in about 2002 rick and i were very bored, with only being
able to release records in a traditional way and only to be able
to tour in a traditional way , so we also felt very comfortable ,
and comfort is really not good, for the creative process, its really
not good, so how do you feed your kids, and still not get into a
place where you're really not comfortable , that was, that was
the dilemma , so we, we started to explore ways of publishing our
work, and so we, we started to release things on the internet,
underworldlive.com has been a place where we published work,
everyday since the beginning of 2000, and we started to put
together albums, that were quite raw , uh not polished,
very instant, and the fans started to respond to them,
we started this thing, the riverrun project , which actually
started with a book, called 'in the belly of saint paul', and
then went to these three download albums, also we felt like why
has an album got to be 70 minutes long, with a dvd extra and all
the other things, that, that seemed to me , it seemed to us to make, sort of less
of the music that was in there, and make all these demands on bands,
to be something to fit somebodys else's idea , the industries idea,
they should be making , whereas what happens to a 20 minute album,
or a 3 hour album, or a 5 day album, well you can't do that, in the
old model, so there was that, with the ability to put things out, whenever
we wanted to and that was really important, and when the three albums
downloaded, done , were done very well, we thought well we want to do
5 twelve inches, so we put 5 twelve inches out , and then we did the
triple live album, from the tokyo show, a couple of years ago, because
we wanted to explore what it was like to release records of the live
shows, just for the audience that come, just as a kind of thank you,
you've turned up, you've paid all this money, here's, we make a
very affordable record of this event, and we're exploring that
and web radio shows became very important, thats part of the
riverrun project, you know all of these things, they were to do with,
breaking out of the , uh, the constraints of the traditional record making

i: how does your own internet radio, or web radio started then, and
what was the general idea behind it?

k: web radio, on underworldlive.com came out because, john peel , our
great teacher from the bbc, asked us to look after one of his shows,
when he want on holiday , um he said do whatever you want , here, here
we said can we have a couple of records for you, (?) first album which
since has become quite close with (?) um and of course john never came back,
and we were destroyed, one because like our teacher, and one of musics best friends,
had died, and two because we had intended to take 200 pieces of
music, and give them to him, and say, help us make records
john, and together john peel , rick and me would make records,
and he went and died, and we had no plan, that was our plan, our big plan, you know,
and um, so what do we do, and we kinda had to think about what
we were going to do next, the sort of thing, and one of them was in
talking to the young guys at the bbc, that were in his team, and we have to
carry on , just have to carry on, you guys carry on producing,
specially shows the bbc, and we will carry on, johns taught us,
and make a web radio show, which is what we've done



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