Music World: Underworld On Bowie And Eno

Dance veterans Underworld are back with their latest album, the brilliant Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future. With the record having just been released, is the mood in the camp expectant or nervous?

“Well, we’re showering and having our breakfast after playing Berlin last night, and trying to work out who has the kettle,” laughs Underworld’s vocalist, the notably warm and friendly Karl Hyde. “Reality bites! It belongs to the world now, there’s nothing you can do. We made the record that came to us, and now it’s whatever – so don’t forget to take the bins out, that’s what I say!”
Although the album does a superb job of utilising many familiar Underworld reference points, Karl says there was no attempt to trade on past glories.
“There’s no conscious decision to be Underworld at all, in fact quite the opposite on my part,” he explains. “I didn’t want to think about the group, I just wanted to focus on what Rick was doing and respond to it. We got together in our room in Essex, which is our spiritual home at this point, took out the equipment and started making noise. And if we responded to the sound, we’d record it.
“It was about doing something different each day, not thinking about finishing anything. We were very much in the moment and sparking off one another. We still enjoy the same stuff about Underworld – coming up with unlikely material that pushes us in interesting new directions. We hadn’t done that for a long time, because we’ve spent the last five or six years working on projects with other people.”
Karl says the band’s liberated creative approach on this record reflects the studio strategies deployed by Brian Eno, whose ’70s Berlin experiments with David Bowie were a formative influence on Underworld.
“That philosophy we assimilated back in the ’70s,” he notes. “We were reading about Brian’s approach in the studio, the games he would play to get people to transcend themselves. He was trying to get artists to find something within that was unfettered by conscious thinking. So we’ve always had that outlook, based on the way Brian and Robert Fripp approached recording. You have the legend of Berlin in that whole period, and of Kraftwerk too.
“As kids, David Bowie was obviously a big influence on us. For a long time – and I would say this about The Beatles too, even before Bowie – every album he made was a surprise. It didn’t sound like the same artist, and that became part of what we grew up with.”
On a personal level, Hyde is effusive about the legendary producer.
“I’ve known Brian for 20 odd years now. We’ve done live improvised shows together, we’ve recorded together – we’ve been friends for a very long time. With the two albums we made together a couple of years ago, it just felt normal. It was like, ‘I know this, because I’ve grown up with it.’ He’s a delight to work with, very generous. The games he plays in the studio are never to make anyone look foolish, they’re always to make someone look great.”
Another renowned figure with whom Underworld have frequently collaborated is film director Danny Boyle, of Trainspotting and Job fame. Like Eno, he seems to be kindred artistic spirit.
“Absolutely,” nods Karl. “Danny is one of those rare film directors who loves music with a passion and puts it at the beginning of the project. It’s integral to the film, as it should be. I know many composers who don’t have that luxury of directors who’ll bring them in so early on a project. But Danny is one of those filmmakers who does that, and it’s a delight.
“He also loves music, so you can have an articulate conversation with him, and his reference points are fantastic, so clear. They give you direction that you can do something special with. Anthony Minghella was another person like that, although Anthony was in a band. But he absolutely loved music and put it to the forefront of his projects.”
It’s now 20 years since Trainspotting, and recently we had the news that a sequel is set to be shot this summer. The original had one of the best soundtracks of the ’90s, and Boyle’s use of Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ in the film achieved iconic status.
“What a gift that was,” reflects Karl. “Interestingly, we turned it down! That was a very interesting period in our lives. Friends of ours had read Irvine Welsh’s book, and they misinterpreted it, as being some kind of bigging up of caning it. Rick and I never saw our music as having any kind of drug association at all – we were making music and it was nothing to do with drugs.
“So when we heard that this director wanted to use our music in a film that we thought was about the glorification of drug culture, we refused. And so Danny had to get us into the edit, and show us some of the grimmest parts of the film to convince us it wasn’t a glorification. And when he showed us, it was like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool. In that case, you can do what you want’, and the relationship was cemented then.”

Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future is out now and gets a live Forbidden Fruit airing in Dublin over the June Bank Holiday.