Last time I heard Skyscraper was Sean Johnston dropping it in Croatia a few years ago. Similar effect, sounded amazing.
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Some of my most treasured things. Dubnobass has always been my desert island album and I think Dirty Epic is my one track. BM is right nothing much sounded like skyscraper at the time, although interesting to learn much later that the influence was the Red Zone dub of the Thompson Twins.
I miss Darren, although they have come back in form recently with Barbara Barbara and Drift
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I think M.E might be my favourite. Such a brilliant piece of music. And the last few minutes of Skyscraper. And Eight Ball. And Second Hand. 
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Rez was massive for our crew. Heady days.
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Dirty is very underrated
Lemomn Int - Eclipse as well
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Its funny I’ve been revisiting Underworld a lot recently prior to this article. Been checking some of the more downtempo weirder mixes which I would have turned my nose up to at the time.
I always regarded Leftism as the defining electronic album of the 90s but Dubnobass is definitely up there
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Cowgirl/Rez both astonishing records to this day. The Bedrock mix of Cowgirl was a cracking effort too.
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Huge.
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Dubnobass has stood the test of time for me, rarely if ever listen to Leftism these days.
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The triumvirate of Underworld, Orbital & Leftfield were the apogee of UK dance acts that could match anyone band live.
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I think it’s interesting looking back at that period when these dance bands were emerging, because it was basically the second gen of acid house coming at it all from a different angle, combined with new tech, huge parties being forced indoors and the indie/dance barriers coming down. Obv for those of us now mid-late 40s, that was our epiphany, but does any of it still objectively stand up tho? I think a lot of that guerilla stuff (intoxication aside) sounds terrible now tbh, and i don’t think orbital aged well at all, and even something seminal like fsol papua new guinea (ducks) isn’t all that now. Whereas most of early underworld still sounds amazing though, i think because there were so many ideas in there, they were a bit eccentric + a whole load of eternal E moments
Not forgetting Chemical Brothers and Prodigy. Any one of these were regularly blowing the rock bands of the day off stage
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agree but also:
karl hyde’s voice/lyrics never landed with me. i don’t go back to the full albums because there’s too much of him and not enough not-him. loved ‘rez’, never played ‘cowgirl’. can’t ignore the vocal. and man, i know that ‘born slippy’ was mega everywhere but i couldn’t hang at all - i didn’t play 140bpm and even if i did i didn’t want to hear all that “lager lager lager” stuff, it just caused my hands to involuntarily ball up into fists.
(small caveat - ‘underneath the radar’ got a lot of play around here in the late 80’s at the height of dance rock and that didn’t bother me - but that’s a different era, it was more “of it’s time” rather than underworld V2 with darren, which felt like more “of the future”)
and maybe that’s it - seems like a lot of those “dance bands” had a goofball frontman and in general i didn’t care for any of them. to me, many of those acts were at their best when they were (somewhat) faceless.
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I always regarded Leftism as the defining electronic album of the 90s but Dubnobass is definitely up there
To me Leftism was a dance pop album - the early Leftfield singles were killer - “Not Forgotten” and “Difference” as Djum Djum, but like the Chemicals, they crossed over and quickly lost their edge.
Dubnobass was a revolutionary album that surprised on every listen and still does tbh.
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Born Slippy was and is an absolute shocker, I can’t bare it.
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They were pretty devastating live. I mean the Prodigy really tore it up (the show the floor collapsed at Brixton was nuts) then but everyone else worked from ADAT so their shows were sort of on a tape but with fx and noises on top. underworld ran the studio live on stage so they could just extend and extend when it was going nuts. This was a good one…
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Great article about graffiti writer 10 Foot on the Financial Times website.
Link goes to a pay wall, but if you google it, it’s fine.
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I read that. Thought it was really good…
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Great piece. Was just looking at one of his earlier, trying to work out the angle he must have been holding the can at.
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I guess they had also had ‘other’ lives as a proper rock band, not just club music. Karle Hyde played guitar for Prince allegedly. More to draw on?