Disco Sunday #54: Interview with Underworld!

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Suzanne Kraft

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Wolf + Lamb Fabric...

I spoke to Karl from legendary techno pioneers Underworld when they were in LA on their recent US tour. Originally this interview was going to run in a magazine but that fell through, so finally I can publish it here. As always my questions centered largely on the creative process. For what its worth I was in the midst of a rather long creative funk when I did this interview, and Karl’s wise words inspired me to revisit and try to finish a bunch of incomplete songs. May he inspire you as well!

Baron von Luxxury:: Take me through how a song comes together, from the initial idea to the final product.

Karl Hyde: We have a large studio where the live gear is set up all the time with a sound system, and the same recording gear (Logic) that Rick (Smith) and I have in our homes. We can try things there loud and move very quickly, and take away those files then work at home. We work in each others houses or we can send files via the internet, which is something we do when we’re working on film scores: passing around files, talking on the phone “try this, try that can you try a response to this” et cetera.

And when theres music that inspiring, I bring out these books and improvise singing words as they are on the page. Sometimes things come out in unlikely rhythms and combinations. Rick may then take it on and edit things out he may double and repeat things. He may come back and say “I really like that but can you sing it again, I think the groove is a bit off.” Or: “we’re missing a verse, can you respond and do something?” Or: “lets try this live.” Or, as is happening now with with several new piece of material, we’ll take them on the road and say “we think we’ve got it and it’s sounding cool…but somethings not quite the final ticket. So…lets play it live!” Because playing in front of people is a heightened state of awareness and has a positive effect on the way we write. So we’re multitracking the shows as we go along, every night.

BvL: Are you doing the “notebooks to vocals” thing alone and recording it, or with Rick in the room?

KH: Sometimes together, sometimes alone – we just work in whatever way we can. Sometimes we have to do it in hotel rooms on laptops. Quite a lot of material may start in a hotel in a very basic way – low key, stripped down, raw – me on a laptop singing into a digital recorder, then bouncing that onto a track later. We often cruise music shops to find things that make an evocative sound. We sometimes play a “responding” game where he and I sit in hotel rooms and say: “let’s swap laptops in 20 minutes!”

BvL: Tell me more about the recent improvisation based shows in Australia that you did with Brian Eno. Did you pull out the old “Oblique Strategies” for that, or…?

KH: No, we made something up ourselves. Brian’s been a friend for some time and did some jamming with us at our studio in Essex. Later he was curating a three week event at Sydney Opera House and it culminated in three one and a half hour improv concerts which we did in a day! We did two days of rehearsal with Brian and a fantastic group called The Necks, Leo Abrahamson on guitar and Jon Hopkins on electronics and piano. An extraordinary collection of people. We evolved a language between us — little signs and words that would evoke a memory or inspire us in a particular way. We would improvise based on those words or phrases and it was great.

BvL: Improvisation has clearly been at the core of your music. Is in any way a response to feeling constrained by the experience of being pop stars in the 1980s? (Prior to forming Underworld, Karl and Rick were in an oh-so-80’s band called…well, their logo was an unpronouncable squiggly thing. But they were called “Freur“, and their one and only hit single “Doot Doot”, which peaked at #59, is posted at the end of this interview).

KH: Yeah it is – we were rubbish at it! Everytime we’d get dropped from a record deal Rick and I would make this electronic music that we loved. But the thing was we didn’t stick to where our hearts were, we kept trying to be pop stars. And at the end of the 80’s Rick said “I’ve had enough, I want to do what I want to do, which is make this electronic music.” And the only way to get this out was through the dance floor, because we couldn’t be part of the regular music industry anymore. So we gave up trying to be a band and having a career making music.

BvL: Why do you say you were rubbish at it?

KH: Well…we were! We tried to be a traditional pop group and nothing happened – we’d just keep getting dropped! We’d make records and tour and the music wouldn’t go anywhere. We had our heads in things that were tied into traditional ways of thinking. And you have to break out from that sometimes. Rick is really good at inspiring people to break out from traditional thinking and finding something that has some spark and fire of originality, and thats one of the reasons I love working with him.

Underworld: “Born Slippy (Nuxx)” Live

BvL: There seems to be a disconnect between your being so incredibly prolific and productive in so many areas (they produced more than 200 tracks for the most recent album “Oblivion with Bells” before narrowing it down to the final 12), and yet it can take you 3-5 years to complete an album. Whats the dealio?

KH: You’re right, and it comes down to time and manpower. If we could tour and also *not* tour at the same time (laughs), then we could finish and have things ready for release. But thats the only thing holding us up is that we tour so much so our time in the studio is very little. So we have to move in tiny steps and its frustrating sometimes. But perhaps philosophically it teaches us some necessary form of acceptance!

BvL: So thats not a conscious choice? I thought it was perhaps that you feel “live” is be more about improvisation and imperfection, while your recorded output is more like graphic design where the final product is more precious.

KH: Yes, those two are very distinctly different things. We love the the imperfections of the live show, indeed we put out something like twelve double live albums and we stand by all the imperfections and idiosyncracies. Finding time to finish things to the high degree that Rick does is pretty hard. And we also understand that if you start swamping people with stuff it changes peoples’ perspective of your music. But we go as fast as we can, given the time we’ve got. And we embrace what that imposes on us and how we have to work. Sometime you go racing ahead with an idea for how an album should happen, you kind of miss the way life is leading you. And thats why I say sometimes its better embracing and accepting the way it is, and working with the restrictions you are given. Because quite often something much more interesting comes out of it.

BvL: Being the principals at Tomato (a successful British design studio whose work famously includes the credits for “Trainspotting”) simultaneously with your music career, do you find parallels between the two careers?

KH: We’re both inspired by visual arts, Rick is passionately inspired by translating images into music And I have an art school background. Rick, John and I have worked together since 1980. That marriage of visual imagery and sonic arts has always been there, we’ve always seen them going hand in hand. In the early days John was scratching with video screens on stage with us in 1983, with people saying “that’ll never catch on”! So we’ve always seent the two going hand in hand. So when we formed Tomato it was deeply inspiring to get opinions from artists in different disciplines. And onstage we’ve always felt like we’re taking an art show on tour for years with our team we have lights, video projections, cameras, sound is all improvised, and we encourage everyone to make things and show it in the show. So its a constantly evolving visual jam session as we go around the world.

BvL: What comes next?

KH: We just put out a record with Mark Knight; there’s the recordings with Brian Eno; and there’s the recently releasedidrum iPhone app that Rick has worked on with iZotope and G-force. And if we can just get a few minutes we’ll start finishing material and return to the concept of releasing material as a journey that culminates in – perhaps – an album. But we’re going to start early next year rolling out new Underworld material.

*****

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mp3: “Crocodile” – Underworld

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mp3: “Born Slippy Nuxx” – Underworld

Blast from the past:

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mp3: “Doot Doot” – Freur

Underworld Myspace
Buy Underworld music on Amazon
Underworld Myspace
Tomato
Darktrain

xx,
Baron von Luxxury is My Fake Name
@luxxury

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