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When Underworld released their last album "A Hundred Days off " no one thought it would be nearly 2000 days until the next one arrived. It hasn't been a case of lazing around in the Essex countryside though as the last 5 years have thrown up the 1992-2002 anthology album, two major film scores (Anthony Mingellas' "Breaking and Entering" and Danny Boyles' 2007 "Sunshine"), a selfpublished typographic journal "In The Belly of Saint Paul", a series of pioneering digital-only releases, internet- radio broadcasts, a groundbreaking live web-tv broadcast and gig in partnership with Apple and Frankfurts' techno giants Cocoon and countless gigs around the world. During all of this action Rick and Karl, with the aid of trusty laptops, a couple of home studios, Abbey Roads' legendary facilities and a Pig Shed, have been carefully developing ideas for the new album "Oblivion with Bells", an album that was finally completed in a flurry of activity and excitement in spring 2007. True to form Underworld tread their own path through modern electronic music tipping a nod to current sounds, styles and production techniques but never afraid to let their song writing and musicianship shine out in this digital world. "Oblivion with Bells" draws heavily on Rick and Karls' vast array of musical influences (Nick Drake, Def Mix, Ricardo Villalobos, Can, James Holden, Eno) and experiences performing worldwide to create a truly unique Underworld journey. The album kicks off like Saturday night with Sven Vth, Simian Mobile Disco and Frankie Knuckles all fighting to get on the decks, then takes you over the flat fields of rural Essex, through Kings Cross with its olympic dreams and piss stained alleys, ending blessed out in a hidden cove in Ibiza. Epic techno nestles next to frail acoustics, beatific prose next to sharp urban observation, amazing sound texturing mixed with mobile phone recordings, rarely has the Underworld palette been so rich.
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After a five-year hiatus, Underworld return with an album that draws from across their past. With a mix of aggression and sunshine, they calculate syncopated, ricocheted beats against cleanly delineated textures and circumscribed melodies that have the cool of the 1980s New Romantic movement from which they originally sprang as Freur. Kraftwerk is in the DNA of their sound, but they've moved well past that, incorporating elements of hip-hop and industrial music into the mix. I wonder if Underworld's later mix of poetic spoken-word songs affected Brian Eno's recent work with poetry and music, because the influence seems to have boomeranged back in the vocal cadences of tracks such as "Ring Road." Like some of Eno's work, Karl Hyde's frequently treated, monotone talk-singing vocals could have been time-shifted from a beat-poetry reading of the early '60s. The only thing missing is the bongos. When his voice is processed, it merges as part of the sound field, but when his voice is relatively unaltered, as on "Good Morning Cockerel," it just becomes tedious. The best tracks on Oblivion with Bells are also the most ambitious. "Crocodile" has some lovely, almost Gregorian harmonies, while "Beautiful Burnout" is an epic journey with broad synthesizer chords sweeping by like headlights before segueing into a joyfully ritualistic electro-percussion tribal workout. But after that pair of opening tracks, you have to wait until the very last piece, a long, trancey bit of psychedelic drift called "The Best Mamgu Ever," to hear something more than unformed melodies and unstrung ideas. Underworld can reach higher ground. --John Diliberto
