sherburne on underworld

[viddy]

It's Duckie, you'll never be right and he'll always be smarter than you!

[Tom]

Hay guys wats up?

[BeautifulBurnout]

Adam: While I can see where you are coming from, in your cafe analogy, KoS isn't "someone overhearing" but (as a prolific poster to the forum) is part of the group sitting round having the discussion. If Duckie had said "KoS, you point of view is crap because actually what Sherburne is saying is XYZ and you have to admit that there is some cogent argument in there" there wouldn't have been an issue, afaiac.

What he actually said, to bring it down to the lowest common denominator, is: "KoS - (and he singled KoS out for particular criticism, and not for the first time, from a multitude of short, knee-jerk responses, my own included) - Sherburn is awesome, he has opened for Michael Meyer and he writes a lot about techno, so that makes him worthy of respect, and you are dork for not realising that."

Maybe I am just too much of a hippy, maybe I am so old that I have learnt that you don't attract flies with vinegar, I dunno. But imo Duckie's response at this stage was just as daft as anyone elses. And with the (little) knowledge I have gleaned as a result of his past posts in his previous incarnation, it is evident that he is considerably more articulate and intelligent than to just base his response on something so shallow. Unless he was playing "flush the fanboy" for his own amusement and that of others.

I may be conpletely wrong, and I apologise if I am. But I will maintain my position that, if someone is obliged to resort to personal attack, they have lost the argument.

Let's argue about the content, not the people participating in the argument.

[stimpee]

Originally Posted by adam

KiD CUE IS DUCKIE?!?!?!?!1

i agree with everyone here. you're all correct.

but what i was thinking though is that maybe duckie decided to call himself 'kid cue' because an anagram of 'tribal duckie' is 'kid lubricant'

i'll get me coat.

[patrick]

Originally Posted by stimpee

i agree with everyone here. you're all correct.

but what i was thinking though is that maybe duckie decided to call himself 'kid cue' because an anagram of 'tribal duckie' is 'kid lubricant'

i'll get me coat.

WOW!!! that musta taken some time!

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by machin chouette

well , i can't see the problem ! (with the article)
i hav'nt read all the posts here (cause it is so boring = personal calling etc)
but am i dreaming or does he brings a question about
the kind of audience / big size and the music you will create ?
as if you 've got in mind (before actually start an album) "well we / i have to play festivals (biggest one) so we have to make music for it"
of course i am not clear and articulate and blablabla but this subject is a very interesting one !
as an artist i will be very sad to be that much constrained to such external factor (where i will play)
but if you think of it twice , sometimes artists are/were commissioned ( just think of the tate modern museum ) but here with music it will be not by someone outside but yourself ( your idea about your audience)
well your own definition about who you are as a musician

well well well i will stop now and think of it just for myself

Good questions. And I think, (imo of course), that is is pretty safe to say that, while the band, under the control of their record label, were obliged to take these things into consideration for commercial reasons, the purpose of the Riverrun Project has been to shed those shackles and release the kind of music that comes from their soul, not from some label's wallet.

In this, they still manage sellout gigs, which, in itself, is a barometer of their popularity. OK, it goes without saying that Nuxx is still the choon that gets the wildest crowd response, but having attended 5 gigs over the last 18 months, I can testify to the fact that new material is as popular with the crowds as any of the older, more established numbers.

They still have it. There has been a shift in their style, but they still have the pulling power to fill the halls and the fields. And I maintain that Mr Sherburne, for all his popularity "the other side of the pond", has kind of missed the point by apparently ignoring the recent releases, and is judging the band by what he percieves to be past failures and successes in his opinion as a minimal techno fetishist, (not that I have anything against minimal - on the contrary), and is not comparing like with like, but like with what he would like.

[jose m]

i have followed underworld from the very early days and i find the review very interesting.well posted thank you.

[BrotherLovesDub]

i've gone back and deleted my posts not on the subject of the article. it would be nice if the others would do the same and let's cut the cancer out of this thread and just focus on the content of the article. I feel like there are more important issues left to discuss re: UW in the year 2006.

How would the RRP's be perceived if they had been released under Mr. and Mrs. Christmas or some other pseudonym? Would the reaction be different if the artist name wasn't Underworld?

I don't believe Underworld have written tunes for a festival crowd since BF and i'd be surprised to know they actually cared when recording the tunes what they would sound like in front of 20K fans. With the exception of the AHDO gigs, UW change things up live and improvise, as we all know and love, so i don't think an album version gets crafted to suit a festival.

Am I a fan boy if I bought all the RRP's, barely listened to them, but want to support a couple guys doing something for the fans (releasing stuff on the cheap or free that would othewise go unreleased, making music to please themselves and still pushing the boundaries of their sound, having a semi-close relationship with the fans website and fan base in general? Well, if i am what you call a fanboy, so be it. I couldn't think of a nicer band to be fawning over. So what if I think their best ablum was released 13 years ago? I am happy to see them enjoying this stage of their career and respect the risks they've taken releasing ambient material digitally. The Breaking and Entering Soundtrack is gorgeous, btw. It's and ambient film score adn should be listened to with that in mind, but it's beautiful and evocative.

Or, I can just hop on the constantly changing Bandwagon of hipster music and bitch about UW for not writing Jumbo pt. 2 or another Born Slippy. Ultimately, the music you love when you're 16-25 is the music that will mean the most to you when you're 45. What Underworld have done since my fav. lp, Dubno, is not nearly as important to me as who they've become. I respect them as people and artists and look forward to hearing anything they decide to release. I may not always love it (see RRP, BF, half of AHDO) but i'll always have time to give it a chance.

That sentiment is where a review like Sherburne's doesn't reach. It is for the casual fan, but written from a voice of someone who is very familiar with their work. I believe Sherburne's knowledge of Underworld ends in 2002, precisely when the minimal techno trend started catching on worldwide. I don't believe he has the RRP's, the remixes, the Tokyo CD's or the inspiring Lemonworld shows or Cocoon set. Those things mark the direction of Underworld, not the album cuts on AHDO.

Along the same lines as the RRP's coming out under a pseudonym, if journalists would stop calling UW a techno act, the expectation of floorfillers and anthems would dissolve. UW are electronic musicians pursuing a different path to the one that made them famous. Not easy to do and pretty damn scary if you're used to earning a certain amount of money. I'd say, it's pretty damn repsectable too.

Has anyone seen Duckie? Wouldn't mind his opinion on the state of UW and the content of Sherburne's review.

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by BrotherLovesDub

i've gone back and deleted my posts not on the subject of the article. it would be nice if the others would do the same and let's cut the cancer out of this thread and just focus on the content of the article.

I would.

But then it would make the thread so boring, dahling

/me paints her nails

[adam]

Sorry, BLD, if your, "Am I fanboy if..." comments refer to what I was saying, I meant it to be tongue in cheek and not taken at face value. What I meant, I guess, is that the droves of threads dissecting the minutiae of every official or semi-official release have left me unable and uninclined to try and sift through for information I find actually valuable.

I meant to buy Riverrun; at the age you're describing they were one of my favorite acts, and so I wouldn't "write them off" because I had less interest in a single album. I think it more has to do with my tastes drifting from their aesthetic than a matter of their output becoming less satisfactory. I just never got around to buying any of it, and it's still far down my priority list.

I don't think I can agree with your comments about how you to relate to the music you liked when you were 16-25. I'm just outside of that age now (29), so maybe I'm too close to see the effect you're predicting, but I find I don't really relate to most of the stuff I liked at that age. Every once in a while I throw on some for nostalgia's sake, and I can rarely make it through an album, despite the fact that some of that stuff meant the world to me.

BB, that isn't at all what Duckie was saying. Not in the slightest degree. I'm surprised that that is your honest interpretation.

(edit: that's weird, when I edit my post that weird character in the first word isnt' there...)