REVIEW: Underworld, Beaucoup Fish (JBO/V2)
- Simon West
After The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, the third of the holy trinity of what some people still insist on clumping together as "electronica" is Underworld. They don't use easily recognizable funk samples or sport a shouting, pierced nutter, but they are responsible for one of the songs of the decade. "Born Slippy.nuxx" was everywhere in 1996, from the film "Trainspotting" to the top of Single of the Year lists everywhere, a pulsing beast on the dance floor and a chanted anthem ("lager lager lager lager") after closing time on Friday nights across the planet. How do you follow that up?
Effortlessly, apparently. Underworld's third album, Beaucoup Fish, is easily their best yet, blending dance floor beats and singer/guitarist Karl Hyde's stream-of-conscious lyrics across a diverse mix of styles and moods while moving still further away from traditional rock-based structures.
The tempo varies from the straight-forward dance floor crash of "Shudder/King Of Snake" and raving intensity of "Moaner" to the ambient beats of "Winjer." "Bruce Lee" is something brand new - a heavily hip-hop influenced rhythmic groove that should pack them in on the floor. The typically elegant "Skym" is a mournful, piano-backed ballad which drops the vocoder in favor of a reflective, untreated vocal from Hyde (and drops the beat entirely).
First single "Push Upstairs," is a concise, structured affair with a funky house piano and an actual chorus that should actually get a chance of radio play in the States. It reappears nearer the end of the album in the dubby, ambient shape of "Push Downstairs."
"Moaner," first featured on the Batman and Robin Soundtrack, is a pulsing monster. A vibrating, almost industrial bass line rumbles behind frenetic synth loops and break beats for three minutes, before cutting back to the bass and the sound of one man ranting: Hyde as narrator, lounge singer, lunatic. Utterly out of control, completely frantic, as the instrumentation rises again until the abrupt false ending, and the old-school John Carpenter movie fade.
A superb album, in short. Underworld makes thoroughly original, intelligent and atmospheric electronic music. If they lose any points at all it's for not sticking with the brilliant original album title: Tonight, Matthew, I Am Going To Be Underworld. The first absolutely essential electronic/dance release of 1999.
