Strawberry Hotel - Dirty reviews

[aphasein]

There's a lot to digest here - saw it alluded to once as like a mini Drift, although overall it's probably both more dance-heavy and oddly experimental than Drift. Always expect a lot of variety with Underworld and glad to have it here, but the sheer number and short track times are making it harder to get a handle on (and yes Drift was obviously a lot bigger and more varied, but following along with it a track at a time per week or so really let them breath and get ingrained).

There's a lot of classic Underworld sounds and motifs throughout the album mixed with some newer modern takes and techniques, and Karl always tends to go off into some new vocal territory each album, but this feels surprisingly different this time (in both a really exciting and weirdly incongruent way somehow). It's like there's a backbone of fresh-yet-classic Underworld tracks with some odd surface details going on. Tiny bits that would normally add depth further back are front and center, and vice versa, with buried vocals sometimes low in one channel (and pitched up vocal samples, ala modern hip-hop/R&B, while understood for cultural value and trying to add a new spin, always rub me wrong there as they do here). There's also a weird interest in sculpting static surf/dead air/tape hiss sounds this time that's hard on my tinnitus.

I don't know that this is the reason and it's probably much more complex an interaction between artists, but the review from the Arts Desk touched on something I have been thinking about: "Then the music gradually quietens down, with less predictable Underworld fare: including Ottavia, a bewitching track for Hyde and Smith, with a spoken word vocal from Rick Smith's daughter, mezzo-soprano Esme Bronwen-Smith, written by her and based on an aria from an opera by Monteverdi. She also co-produced the album, which may account for the welcome off-piste quirkiness of some tracks..."

I think overall it's energizing and was probably really enjoyable in the studio, but I do wonder if there was ever a "lowercase" version of the album that was rethought and expanded later (not to harp on it, but the 5 original tracks played live, the style of visuals with them and on the single drops, seemed to have a different more classic trajectory - they even kept the lowercase titling on the singles tracks with same exact edits and didn't segue them any into other album tracks, which seems unusual).

Anyway, long story long, I spent today both shuffling, and first-time for an Underworld album, actually editing almost half of the tracks. Mainly just fading out endings to join better or remove some blank space, but I cut Iron Bones before the pitched up third vocal refrain at end and replaced Ottavia with Velvet Does then it. Flows nicely into the acapella. I've also bumped Oh Thorn to a companion remix album I plan to make (with the Kettama tracks and others, as Thorn is more a remix/reprise of Haarlem), as well as Stick Man (which is obviously not a remix, but will end that album better). And finally I put Black Poppies as the end track right after Gene Pool, which flows really well and feels like a more beautifully epic conclusion together (I also experimented with cutting out the orgasmic sing-yelling runs from Lewis in P, but I'll probably still hear them in my head and get used to it, so doubt that will last).