"retrosonic radio" presents underworld | 2000 - 2007

[BrotherLovesDub]

Dominic Eulberg instead of dominique hillberg

[crazysugarboy]

Many many thanks doc for this link/download - it is just brill!

[negative1]

Originally Posted by BrotherLovesDub

Dominic Eulberg instead of dominique hillberg

fixed too..
later
-1

[BeautifulBurnout]

Thanks for all your hard work transcribing this, -1. Quite a task.

I think the "Chicari" you queried might in fact be Enter Shikari - I know Karl has posted a link to them on UW live in the past (also one of my son's fave bands, otherwise I would never have heard of em )

[negative1]

Originally Posted by BeautifulBurnout

Thanks for all your hard work transcribing this, -1. Quite a task.

I think the "Chicari" you queried might in fact be Enter Shikari - I know Karl has posted a link to them on UW live in the past (also one of my son's fave bands, otherwise I would never have heard of em )

fixed, and i've creditted both of you..
thanks again, yeah, i would post links,
but it's hard enough stopping every 3 seconds
to type for 20 minutes straight!

and i still have to do the second, and longer
part tonight!

later
-1

[m.g.]

Many many thanks for transcribing, -1

[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

[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



transcript : -1

[negative1]

i: are you are actually getting a lot of, yes you are getting a lot of cds,
and mp3s or whatever format of the music , and productions are in to play
and to listen to and todecide uh whats good or bad

k: it would be so fantastic, every week in the post, we get stuff
which is so amazing, and so exciting and its had again, a big,
effect on this album, big effect, me and rick get together in
a room, alright we're going to do a show, and we spend all day
just listening to stuff, i do what johns sort of taught us to do, like put
a star , two stars, three stars, against tracks, so when we
come together to play rick, we have a listening day , and put
together a setlist , and then you know we play peoples music, and then
we jam our music, and we give away unreleased material,
then we have a chat room, and a webcam and we do, we do
what john used to do really , sometimes we do a specialty
show and sometimes we do an very eclectic show

I: you do it every week?

k: it hasn't been possible to do it every week,
and sometimes we get kind of a big chunk
where we're touring, and you, you just cant do it, the whole
idea is that we can do it, once a month would be
great, that really would be great, when we're
not doing the web radio show, um, i link to one
of those artists, every day so that if someone
was sent our record, we do a link direct to their
myspace, or their website, so that you can buy
their music direct

i: yeah, that was actually the interview, of karl
hyde from underworld , a very long interview

transcript : -1

[lloyd]

thnx!