Shiny, slippy people

They mightn’t figure as highly on people’s Christmas shopping lists over here, but in Japan Underworld are currently sitting pretty at the number one spot with their Anthology 1992-2002 double CD collection. Damn fine work for an outfit that feared becoming a one hit wonder in the wake of ‘Born Slippy’.

Japan also hosted Karl Hyde’s favourite ever Underworld show, Futura 2000 on the slopes of Mount Fuji in August 1996.
“It was a real buzz to be offered these extraordinary places to play music,” Hyde enthusiastically remembers. “The slopes of Mount Fuji, a beach in Norway, a Roman amphitheatre in the south of France. We were a live band doing what a lot of DJs had done up to that point. We were part of that crossover.”
Karl has also been busy on a collaborative literary project with John Warwicker entitled In the Belly of Saint Paul, his second typographic journal after Mmm…Skyscraper I love you which was set in New York. This time, the raw material was collected between 1992 and 1998 on the streets of London. “3am. The darkness that was 17th century London is still present, waiting and ready,” Karl writes. “The quick grope in the doorway underneath a stone angel. Bleached Blonde and legless. Friday night. Once again.”
That urban stream of consciousness will be familiar to Underworld fans used to his bizarre musical collages of conversational snippets and the quirky minutiae of everyday life.
“I believe we all see the world as a series of fragments,” Karl says. “I just try to write them down as fast as I can.”
In fact, some of Underworld’s more memorable titles and successful songs owe their monikers to greyhounds.
“We got a form book on greyhounds, where we took a lot of our titles from,” Karl reveals. “‘Sappy’s Curry’ was one. ‘Pearl’s Girl’ was another. We’d sit the book on the music stand and work through it. ‘Born Slippy’ was another one. That book’s been quite good to us!”
In addition to producing some of the best singles of their day (no top 10 or 20 of the nineties is complete without ‘Born Slippy’) Underworld were one of the very few dance artists who successfully made the transition to producing good studio albums. However, Hyde admits that this was by happy accident rather than design.
“We weren’t even intending to make an album when we made Dubnobasswithmyheadman (Underworld’s classic debut that climbed to number eleven in the charts),” he admits. “It’s just that Rick said, ‘We’ve got enough tracks. What do you reckon?’ It was only later I discovered that it was a lot of people’s introduction to dance music.”
Having lost pivotal member Darren Emerson along the way to concentrate on his DJing career and run the Underwater label, they’ve readjusted pretty well as a duo. “If someone needs to move on, they need to move on,” Karl muses. “It just wasn’t the space for him anymore.”
As part of their 10-year celebrations, Karl and Rick have also created an exclusive web site for the album, to which anyone is free to contribute. “This site represents ten amazing years in the life of Underworld,” they write. “Ten significant years in the world of technology, politics and global affairs and ten years of your life. Insert your memories of dancing in a field, turning 30, travelling to Creamfields or buying your first sampler. Everything, anything.”
And as the mantra of their classic ‘Cowgirl’ tune proves, they mean everything! b

Anthology 1992-2002 is out now on V2. Share memories of your decade at www.underworldanthology.com