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UNDERWORLD

James Kennedy

Loud Medicine : Dispatches From The Music Industry Underworld

    The music industry as you've never seen it before – from the bottom. Music. We all love it. We can't live without it! But what exactly is it? Why is it so awesome? And who are the mysterious figures who create it, perform it and keep us all stocked up with the good stuff? What's it really like to be in a band and just how bad is the music industry? In his new book, rock'n'roll underdog James Kennedy takes us on a tour through the hidden lives of the every-day musician – this isn’t hotel room trashing but how 99% of musicians live in the real world.

    Blowing away the usual mythologies and pulling no punches, Loud Medicine is a rough and ready rollercoaster ride – OK, transit van ride – into the secret world of the modern day musician. It’s also an exposé of music’s many enemies, a manifesto for change and a love letter to everyone’s favourite medicine. There will be rants, dramas, a cast of dysfunctionals, big ideas, industry scam shockers, truth-bombs, f-bombs, the likely crucifixion of a beloved music icon or two – and yes, of course, there will be road stories. So come and squeeze in amongst the drum cases and warm beers, and let’s hit the road! 

    Underworld

    Barking - 2025 Reissue

      First released in 2010 – this 2025 reissue of 'Barking' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

      "Barking" is Underworld's sixth studio album, but the first time Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have collaborated with other producers. The record enlists the help of techno producers Mark Knight and D. Ramirez, plus a whole cast of brilliant and like-minded producers from across the spectrum of modern dance music to add personal touches to the band’s original material. Enter Welsh drum and bass artist High Contrast, Dubfire, Bristol-based dub step producers Appleblim and Al Tourettes and long term Underworld team member Darren Price.

      The question is, with such a glittering cast of extras, how does it actually sound? From the first undulating pulses of submariner bass, the first vocals - soft like a whisper in the ear - and the first fizz of hi-hats that force along the pace, the sound is unmistakably Underworld. Electronics wrapped effortlessly around songs; streams of consciousness lyrics that form indelible images; a perfectly balanced mix of melody and rhythm. Underworld’s sixth studio album is a thundering return to form, although it’s fair to say that the band responsible have never really been below par. Like the bomb on the Icarus II in Sunshine, this new process of working had the effect of not so much reigniting a creativity within the band as exploding it into myriad new fragments. And through all of this, brilliantly and uniquely, it sounds just like Underworld.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Bird 1
      2. Always Loved A Film
      3. Scribble
      4. Hamburg Hotel
      5. Grace
      6. Between Stars
      7. Diamond Jigsaw
      8. Moon In Water
      9. Louisiana"

      Underworld

      A Hundred Days Off - 2025 Reissue

        First released in 2002 – This 2025 reissue of 'A Hundred Days Off' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

        Review from 2002:
        This is everything you want and expect from an Underworld LP! It's full of richly textured techno and tech-house tracks (vocal or instrumental) with the occasional lush slowie thrown in for good measure. As good as anything else they've done, but unlikely to get them any new converts. Includes the fantastic "Two Months Off" single.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Mo Move
        2. Two Months Off
        3. Twist
        4. Sola Sistim
        5. Little Speaker
        6. Trim
        7. Ess Gee
        8. Dinosaur Adventure 3D
        9. Ballet Lane
        10. Luetin

        Underworld

        Oblivion With Bells - 2025 Reissue

          First released in 2007 – this 2025 reissue of 'Oblivion With Bells' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

          Review from 2007:
          Five years on from "A Hundred Days Off", Messrs Hyde and Smith return with a new Underworld album. Opening with the single "Crocodile", the album continues in a club-track vein, complete with Hyde's stream of consciousness vocals, before dropping the lush ambient track "To Heal", perhaps influenced by their recent work with Gabriel Yared on the "Breaking And Entering" soundtrack. Next up "Ring Road" heads back to the early 80s and 23 Skidoo / Byrne and Eno for inspiration, and is book-ended by another ambient winner "Glam Bucket". Like The Chemical Brothers, those other purveyors of 'dance albums that indie kids can buy', Underworld show here that they have kept up with what's been going on in dance music over the intervening years (updating equipment, adding a glitch here and there), while retaining their own distinctive sound and still remaining relevant.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Crocodile
          2. Beautiful Burnout
          3. Holding The Moth
          4. To Heal
          5. Ring Road
          6. Glam Bucket
          7. Boy, Boy, Boy
          8. Cuddle Bunny Vs The Celtic Villages
          9. Faxed Invitation
          10. Good Morning Cockerel
          11. Best Mamgu Ever

          Underworld

          Barbara Barbara We Face A Shining Future - 2025 Reissue

            First released in 2016 – This 2025 reissue of  'Barbara Barbara We Face A Shining Future' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

            Review from 2016:
            Underworld duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith return with their first new studio album in six years. It’s fair to say that 'Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future' finds the pair creatively reborn. Its seven tracks are fleet-footed, raw and spontaneous - a direct result of a strict working process in the studio that saw Smith and Hyde write entirely new music each time they met. That process has helped produce an album that stands alongside the recently reissued classics 'dubnobasswithmyheadman' and 'Second Toughest In The Infants'.

            So what’s there in the shining future? The opening punch of a two-note detuned bass riff crunching over relentless percussion; the elegiac swoop of strings as they stretch out across off-world electronics; a demented lupine howl that curls itself into an unshakeable earworm; celestial techno and South American acoustics; voices that warp into harmonic riffs; found lyrics that form fine-tuned monolgues; head music to dance to.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. I Exhale
            2. If Rah
            3. Low Burn
            4. Santiago Cuatro
            5. Motorhome
            6. Ova Nova
            7. Nylon Strung

            Underworld

            Beaucoup Fish - 2025 Reissue

              First released in 1999 – this 2025 reissue of 'Beaucop Fish' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

              "Beaucoup Fish" is the fifth album by Underworld, released in 1999. Following the huge success of the single "Born Slippy" from its use in the film Trainspotting, Beaucoup Fish was Underworld's most anticipated release. It spawned several successful singles, including "Push Upstairs", "Jumbo" and "Moaner", which was previously used in the film Batman & Robin. "Beaucoup Fish" was well-received critically (one review calling it 'electronica's "The Dark Side of the Moon"') and remains Underworld's most successful album, with over one million copies sold. It is the last studio album to feature Darren Emerson who departed in 2001 and third album by the techno / house orientated version of Underworld which became active in about 1991/1992 (tracks were being released around this time under the names Lemon Interupt and Underworld). I personally remember this being a particularly arresting album in 1999, with a rollercoaster of dynamics which took you to the dizzying heights of techno stompers "Push Upstairs" & "King Of Snake" and down to the come-down frazzled lullabies of "Skym" and "Winjer" via the Portishead-esque introspection of "Push Downstairs" and the baggy breakbeats of "Bruce Lee". A classic.

              TRACK LISTING

              1. Cups
              2. Push Upstairs
              3. Jumbo
              4. Shudder/King Of Snake
              5. Winjer
              6. Skym
              7. Bruce Lee
              8. Kittens
              9. Push Downstairs
              10. Something Like A Mama
              11. Moaner

              Underworld

              Dubnobasswithmyheadman - 2025 Reissue

                First released in 1995 – this 2025 reissue of 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

                Having seen their synth-rock band Freur grind to a halt in 1989, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith relocated to Romford, hooked up with DJ Darren Emerson and became the art-rock reinvented as techno outfit Underworld. Featuring Smith's stream of consciousness vocals (created by taking a pen an paper with him and “mapping out journeys across cities at night”) and Smith, Emerson and Hyde's immense electronica / techno cuts (equally inspired by early influences like Kraftwerk, Steve Reich, Hawkwind and  Tangerine Dream as the early 90s Romford rave scene) 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' is a landmark 1990s techno album. With Emerson on hand to road test tracks in his DJ sets, the album has key dancefloor winners, but also works a home-listening full length LP. 

                TRACK LISTING

                1. Dark & Long
                2. Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You
                3. Surfboy
                4. Spoonman
                5. Tongue
                6. Dirty Epic
                7. Cowgirl
                8. River Of Bass
                9. M.E.

                Underworld

                Second Toughest In The Infants - 2025 Reissue

                  First released in 1996 – this 2025 reissue of 'Second Toughest in the Infants' is pressed on 180gsm heavy weight black double vinyl. Cut at half speed and meticulously checked for the highest quality audio, this double gatefold has the classic design from the original pressing but with added spine detail to showcase your collection.

                  Originally released in March 1996, 'Second Toughest In The Infants' is Underworld’s masterpiece. Following 1994’s groundbreaking predecessor 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' (the record that cemented the band’s reputation as one of the UK’s most important dance acts), 'Second Toughest…' was the point they forged out alone, in turn creating some of the most forward thinking electronic music this country has ever produced.




                  TRACK LISTING

                  1. Juanita : Kiteless : To Dream Of Love
                  2. Banstyle/Sappy's Curry
                  3. Confusion The Waitress
                  4. Rowla
                  5. Pearl's Girl
                  6. Air Towel
                  7. Blueski
                  8. Stagger

                  Underworld

                  Strawberry Hotel

                    Welcome to Strawberry Hotel.

                    Here, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lines while scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produce ghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead, removed from the overheard; words borrowed from the ether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimes reappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side to side. Each track a very different room - some soundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drum and robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer of melody and euphoric noise - and each room unmistakably, uniquely Underworld. The only advice from Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde upon entering: “Please don’t shuffle.”

                    TRACK LISTING

                    1. Black Poppies
                    2. Denver Luna
                    3. Techno Shinkansen
                    4. And The Colour Red
                    5. Sweet Lands Experience
                    6. Lewis In Pomona
                    7. Hilo Sky
                    8. Burst Of Laughter
                    9. King Of Haarlem
                    10. Ottavia
                    11. Denver Luna (acapella)
                    12. Gene Pool
                    13. Oh Thorn!
                    14. Iron Bones
                    15. Stick Man Test

                    What is "Drift"?

                    • It’s precisely one year inside the minds of Underworld.

                    • It’s a journey that began on 1st November 2018 when Underworld released the track "Another Silent Way" and set off with no map, no fixed destination and a simple mantra ('Drift is the opposite of ‘normal’ or ‘usual’ practice; we’ll do this until we’re dust'). Rick Smith and Karl Hyde’s aim was to create and publish music and film episodically for 52 weeks and see where the journey took them. Within a few weeks, the experiment found its own path, prompting the electronic pioneers to react to previous releases and create new works accordingly. Over time, the duo’s innate curiosity opened up a unique space in which they could experiment, learn and explore new frontiers - together and with others (including Tomato’s Simon Taylor, Australian improv-trance band The Necks, techno producer Ø [Phase], Japanese noise band Melt-Banana, economics writer Aditya Chakrabortty and members of Black Country, New Road). During the 52 weeks, five self-contained episodes were released (respectively in November, January, March, May and August) - collectively, they form "DRIFT Series 1". 


                    STAFF COMMENTS

                    Matt says: An impressively on-going, interactive, year-long project from the band culminates in the album's actual release in October. Always keen to push the envelope, the idea behind this is very satisfying.

                    TRACK LISTING

                    Appleshine
                    This Must Be Drum Street
                    Listen To Their No
                    Border Country
                    Mile Bush Pride
                    Schiphol Test
                    Brilliant Yes That Would Be
                    S T A R (Rebel Tech)
                    Imagine A Box
                    Custard Speedtalk


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