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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Underworld change track. After a couple of years of, as it turns out, deceptive silence, Underworld have eschewed major label release scheduling with the Riverrun Project - three 30-minute, download-only suites of hypnotically building tracks that see the band exploring their more experimental underside while steering well clear of disappearing up it.Asked about the genesis of the Riverrun Project, frontman Karl Hyde explains that “three years ago we’d just come off the back of a two-year world tour and Rick [Smith] and I were sat in Sydney, going, ‘I know we’ve got a lucrative career if we just trundle on nicely, but this is looking really boring.’” So they returned to their early-90s method of working when they would self-release 12-inchers, albeit with the benefits of a decade’s worth of technological advancements. “We wanted to be able to publish when we wanted to and how we wanted to,” Hyde explains, “and to work in very disparate ways. Since 2000 we’ve been publishing work on the internet every day, as and when we feel like it. It’s very empowering to feel we can communicate with our audience when we’ve got something to communicate, rather than waiting for an ideal release slot at a certain time of year.”  Underworld undoubtedly sound re-energised, both on record (well, hard disk) and in person. Something that Hyde, ever willing to deflect praise, credits to John Peel. “When he asked us to sit in for him when he went away - not to return, sadly - that was an enormous source of energy for Rick and me, because it brought us into contact with a lot of new music of all genres in a way that working closely with DJs did in the early 90s. We saw all these independent labels putting stuff out that may never sell in vast quantities, but there’s some fantastic music out there. And instead of kind of getting older and going ‘Oh, there’s no good music around anymore,’ it felt like John was giving us this impetus to go looking, go searching, open up the door and reconnect the networks.” At a stage in their career when many bands, creatively speaking, reach for the pipe and slippers, Underworld are to be admired for jumping off the corporate treadmill and setting about revitalising their work. It’s a move the benefits of which are to be heard in almost every bar of the Riverrun Project.
Chris Power
Lovely Broken Thing, Pizza For Eggs and I’m A Big Sister, And I’m A Girl, And I’m A Princess And This Is My Horse are available to download now from underworldlive.com. The downloadable Misterons Mix is released on 10 July 06.
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comment by unitedcolors
Jun 19, 2007
good to see them back! i just found out they're going to release a new album. out somewhere in oct this year  --- looking forward to see them live again... with new material.http://www.laptoprockers.eu/music/p1/underworld-to...
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