Well, my mind has come to rest
First: my pictures you'll find here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/2351600...7603856989813/
I've had the most delightful experience at my first ever Underworld gig, so I'm sorry if this is
gonna be long, but I've got so many impressions that want to be written down.
We had a nice meetup at the "Scheune", quite close to the venue. Had some good food and drinks, then went to a bar opposite the club where they played awful 80s and German music ... We got quickly into the club and moved to the very front. It wasn't a huge venue, but i was perfect for a UW club gig. The supporting act were 2 german guys (Kissogram). It was ok, some was a bit "pseudo-avantgarde" electronic music, but the crowd started to like it. It got really hilarious when the singer during his trancy moves tripped over the power cord of his mates desk, pulling out his MPC and Keyboard. It took him about 5 minutes to load the samples back in. They finally got to play it after all. They followed with their last song, which was ended by another power-killing-move. So the just said goodbye and went off the stage.
When the Underworld gear was settled up, the stage looked quite small. They also had their own soundsystem installed, which was massive and sounding absolutely brilliant. Boys came up at 9 pm. Both Rick and Karl looked very concentrated and I think there was some tension in the air. Rick fired of the Pearl's Girl bassline and just started to mess around with everything on the desk. Karl pushed in some samples and then we were off. They really started to jam on the tunes.
Most songs had some twist and differences. Nuxx chords came up and the crowd went wild. But it wasn't the usual build-up intro, it just got fluently out of "can you fell this bass". After Karls finishes the vocals, Rick didn't go for the usual last instrumental part of Nuxx. Pricey had some loops set up for him so Rick threw them in and we moved into Billy Goat. It was totally overwhelmed by this jamming. There might have been some parts of Cherry Pie, as the others pointed out. I can't remember. I was back on track when the vocal loop of Airtowel dropped in. It turned out as a long, wonderful intro. And Airtowel was just such a great tune.
After that the inflatables came up. Karls was playing a bit with his guitar, but they had trouble with something (maybe the guiter, as Karl dropped it and hhe vocoding in TMO was later done by Rick
via the NordLead). Karl made the best of it singing "calling Malcolm Corbett ..." and stuff. Was quite funny. They eventually got it sorted out quickly and when the TMO chords roared through the club, the crowd went totally wild. Without the guitar around him, Karl really moved around during TMO and suddenly stood right above us, moving and posing like mad. The break on TMO was again a different, another synth loop, some low pitched vocal samples by Karl. They realy took it down for a second, but bought the tune fully back and everyone was dancing now.
The song went fluently into some different beats they jammed into some bleeping melody. Rick kept this running and slowly put King of Snake over it. This again was a bit different, some things were left out, the bleeping melody kept running. And KOS looked damn cool with green lit tubes ! Then again some improv beats and Karl did his poem / reading. It evolved into Kittens, but here we had some very nasty bass feedback that shook the whole room, and as robotusch said, that spoiled Kittens a bit. However, it turned out as a really raving track, and when we got really loud with applause at the end, Rick looked at the crowd with a bit of surprise on his face like "whoops".
Then on was Boy Boy Boy, which really is great live. Karl puts a lot of felling and mayby anger into it, you can really see he's into what he's singing about. Rick did his vocoded singing and Karl imrpovised a little bit at the later part of the song (razor wire beauty!). And the visuals were awesome too! The end was jammed into some heavy bass and beats improv and Karl played some Guitar again. It then moved onto Crocodile, again fluidly. I spotted Rick singing along by himself while kept mixing.
Next improv was Five Foot Five, which turned into Bamboo. Just a great, great tune, so was Karl cam work (with a shot of the crowd during the break). After a long outro / intro, we finally got to Beautiful Burnout. This also was a bit different, can't remember what it was. The blue visuals are the one I loved most. The really make your temperature drop for second. And the track was as banging and beautiful as I hoped it would be live. After that, the stopped and took their first round of applause. They all looked really pleased. Got a big smile and thumbs-up from Rick
They came back on for Jumbo, beautiful and crowd-pleasing (though some girls behind me kept shouting for Moaner). During Jumbo (might have happend earlier, dunno), the funny moment happend:
Rick was busy at the desk, looking and shouting for Darren, who was standing at his desk, staring at his laptop but not noticing Rick. So Rick kept mixing and at the same time flung out his leg backwards, kindly kicking Darren in the butt. Darren rushed over, helped Rick out, got a hug from him and shuffled back to his laptop
I thought we were at the end when Jumbo faded out, but suddenly the DarkTrain Choir came up. Someone shouted "Ride the Train", but all of a sudden, the BornSlippy synthline was there. It was a great
closer though the end was a bit abrupt. The boys enjoyed the roaring applause and we were done at a few minutes past 11 pm.
We managed to get some drinks and merchandise and Live Disks before we got kindly thrown out. Avoiding the nice "offerings" of the Reeperbahn backstreet ladies, the evening was closed with some drinks in a Reeperbahn pub.
So to make some final comments: they really put a lot of effort into giving a us a really great show. Except for those little technical difficulties, they really managed to keep the vibe going, moving from track into track, not making larger breaks. I loved the little tweaks and differences Rick brought into some of those songs, really makes this a unique experience. About the new desk setup:
I think its a great thing they've done to "open up" their live space to the audience. You get a much better impression of what Rick is doing all the time, and I have deepest respect for all the work he's doing simultaneously up there. He's really the heart of the show! Also, there is much interaction between Rick and Karl, facing each other (well, mostly Rick giving Karl direction ).
So, it was great fun to meet you dirties there, enjoyed it very much !
I'm quite sad I don't have time for the Berlin gig tonight. Hope you guys have / had a good time there!
I think I'll get some sleep now.
Thank you.
P.S.: This was a gig without DarkTrain, Moaner or Rez/Cowgirl !