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

[viddy]

Karl Hyde is all Underworld. What does Rick do? NOTHING. The singer is the one who does everything.

[Camiel]

Please! Bring Alan back!

Oops... wrong forum and thread.

[bazwint]

Just been on that forum. Mad, or what?

[undarrenworld]

Originally Posted by Camiel Toe

Please! Bring Alan back!

Oops... wrong forum and thread.

Yes wrong forum, but great idea!

[dubman]

Originally Posted by viddy

Karl Hyde is all Underworld. What does Rick do? NOTHING. The singer is the one who does everything.

yeah lets turn this into a troll thread proper already

[viddy]

What do you think disco dave was trying to do?

[stimpee]

Originally Posted by viddy

What do you think disco dave was trying to do?

Originally Posted by stimpee

Nice post dave, but its borderline trolling and you need to come back and backup your claims.

exactly. still, it brought out the discussion.

[King of Snake]

Originally Posted by stimpee

not to sound like a total fanboy, but i've been to a lot of underworld gigs and though i've had my bitching session about certain tours not sounding as good as before, things have improved immensely since Pricey joined.

The 1994-96 gigs were incredible because the band could jam and explore every possibility of all the loops and melodies theyd put to disk in the studio, with the added freedom that the crowd werent there to hear "the hits".

Everything Everything which covers the live period between late 97 to mid 99 is an evolution of the earlier period while the jamming is sort of gone, it morphs from song to song and still includes the epic non-singles (e.g. juanita/cups/rowla/kittens). I think after that it was the end of the road for that setlist. When you combine new equipment, a band member leaving, and new material you have to re-think your whole live output. While I wasnt a big fan of the 2001-02-03 tours, listening back to them they sound a lot better than i remember, even if they are more stop-start.

With Price on board Rick can concentrate on things and overlap the tunes, or let Darren stick his own tunes on (which are damn good) while he sets up the next one. By the time the autumn of 2005 came along Pricey was very familiar with the setup as anyone who witnessed the two 013/Tilburg shows or the Luxembourg show the following day will confirm. Three hours each show with plenty of flow, plenty of new tunes and old ones dusted off, and a real happy feel on stage.

Right now the shows are as good as they have been since 99 for me, and I'm approaching 30 gigs since 1994. Nice post dave, but its borderline trolling and you need to come back and backup your claims.

nice one.
I was just listening/watching some clips of the lowlands gig last year. They had a lot of problems with the computer and the first 15 minutes is quite interesting to hear. They're trying to play Crocodile but keep having to go back to some minimal improvisations, with bits of Karl just singing acapella cause the computers have crashed, and then a bit of Skyscraper comes in somewhere and after 10 minutes they finally go back to Crocodile again. It's not the best improvisation ever but you have to respect the way they manage to keep a good show going even when the technology fails. I was at that gig and a lot of people who didn't know underworld that well didn't even notice anything was wrong.

Darren Price certainly adds to the live show, although sometimes it sounds like they are kinda limited to just doing a dj-style crossfade mix between one computer runnig a Price song and the rest of the setup running the underworld material. They sometimes seem to have trouble beatmatching two tracks and have to revert back to an ambient interlude which is a shame. But I've still heard some great improvs and transitions in the "recent" gigs. Most notably the Borialis-Deep Arch-5 foot 5-Air Towel-Mowed Path sequence from the Rotterdam gig.

[Champiness]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

nice one.
I was just listening/watching some clips of the lowlands gig last year. They had a lot of problems with the computer and the first 15 minutes is quite interesting to hear. They're trying to play Crocodile but keep having to go back to some minimal improvisations, with bits of Karl just singing acapella cause the computers have crashed, and then a bit of Skyscraper comes in somewhere and after 10 minutes they finally go back to Crocodile again.

They did all that during a mechanical breakdown? Seriously? I was about to put that on my wishlist for Album 6. It blew me away. Thankfully, it was recorded.

[In The Year Of The Snake]

Originally Posted by Disco dave

...after Darren left, the shows were simply not nearly as good at they were pre 2000

I think there's truth to this, to a degree, though I'd argue that both live and in the studio, the music of Underworld has been less potent without Darren. Less "woofta-dufta" and more "nimby-pimby", as Rick might have once put it.

Back then, Darren was right young and perhaps even a bit daft, especially in contrast to the older and wiser Rick and Karl. (After all, with age comes wisdom, as they say.) So, there was some tension there, with the light-to-moderate slagging that occasionally went back and forth, particularly between Rick and Darren. For example, Darren would take the piss because of his youth and relative inexperience to actually creating electronic music (not DJing, which of course he essentially taught Rick how to do). And then Darren would fire back at the "old folk" (meaning Rick and Karl) because they were set in their ways, not hip to what was happening outside Lemonworld, or some other such, true or not.

But this tension actually worked for the band, like other bands that have come and gone since. (Dwayne Goettel-era Skinny Puppy comes to mind, particularly with the acute personality issues between Ogre and cEVIN Key.) It worked in the way that the music was more intense, more aggressive and more adventurous (to my ears, anyway), as the band's tensions were released through their collective artistic output.

So, to me, that's the downside of the current situation. Less intensity. But I think the upside would be that Rick and Karl probably find their current working situation more comfortable and more enjoyable. And Darren, on his relative own, likely feels the same way.

However . . . . .

I've got to point out that seeing Rick, Karl and Price at the Hollywood Bowl in what I believe was September 2007 was one of the best shows I've ever seen. I was seated up a ways, and I was dancing on the steps the entire time. Needless to say, it was an incredible night, very woofta-dufta, and very much pure Underworld.

Hence, I'm not at all saying the boys don't have it anymore, because they very much do, when they choose to employ it.

...And to Darren's credit, I was there for his set at Coachella 2003, where I was just as blown away with his talent as a DJ as I was when I saw him with Underworld. (And, of course, I went mental again with Underworld's performance the following evening.)