Darren Emerson leaving UW was the worst thing that happened to the band!

[oceanic]

And, for me, Surfboy is by far the least original, creative and experimental track on Dubno. It took me over a decade of Underworld listening to believe that Darren wasn't a vital part of their sound, but stuff like Faxed Invitation, Moon in Water, Beautiful Burnout/Biro The Leggy, Peach Tree and the RiverRun projects have made me believe it.

[bazwint]

I love UW in any shape or form but it would be interesting to hear what Darren could add to the mix right now, if you'll excuse the pun. I don't think it would be a backward step to collaborate on a couple of tracks, and a show or two together would be awesome.

Interesting to hear Skyscaper bookending his (excellent) GU Bogota set - I've seen him three times and never heard him play any Underworld. Perhaps the time is right.

[DaddyAdv]

By mere coincidence, I stumbled across this interview with Rick from 2000 about the making of the EE DVD:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_underworld_live/

Originally Posted by Rick

On a more sort of spiritual level, I had a feeling at the time that we weren't going to be performing in that way much longer. It was sort of a look in Karl's eyes that I recognized; we've been together for nearly 20 years now. And I just thought, "We're not going to keep this up like this." The way we were performing the material where the energy level had risen to a certain point and the pace of things was really fast. And I thought, "This has got a limited life span," in terms of live performance. As it turns out, with Darren leaving the band earlier this year, I was kind of right in a different way.