Dubnobasswithmyheadman (Super Deluxe Edition) —A massive undertaking … Undeniably expansive … absolutely ecstatic.
I first heard Underworld in Brighton, UK, in 1996. My brother and I were on a trust-a-farian holiday, making our way through Europe on Eurail passes and the kindness of strangers. I speak passable German and his French could fool native speakers, so we each took turns being the “silent partner” when we were on the wrong side of the Maginot Line, got utterly flummoxed in Italy, had to claw our way out of Amsterdam lest we stay trapped forever, and overall had a grand time. We had a standing invitation to stay with a friend of mine from USENET (yes, back when that was a way that actual humans communicated with one another) in Brighton so we took a Eurostar through the then-novel Chunnel, paused in London for a couple of days, and then headed south towards the coast.
Julian showed us around his town; his university friends had largely abandoned it for the summer but we still managed to find some fun. The highlight of that first evening was seeing this new movie Trainspotting, which affected me greatly—in no small part due to the final sequence set to Underworld’s “Born Slippy.” After the credits rolled, we danced our way back to Julian’s flat and shared whisky late into the night, set to the soundtrack of MTV Europe, which at the time was dominated by Prodigy’s “Firestarter” and … more Underworld, this time the phenomenal animated video for “Rez” indelibly stamped on my mind.
We finished our tour with many fun adventures not relevant to this tale. After landing back in the States, I started a new job at an early, doomed dot-com startup and a new life in San Francisco, diving deep into the techno/rave/dn’b scene and shopping for CD imports at Amoeba, Rasputin, and Virgin records. Finding Second Toughest in the Infants with the UK-issue second disc (“Born Slippy (NUXX)” / “Rez”) was super exciting, plus there was an intriguing series of CD EPs that Underworld began issuing which were almost like mini-albums. Pearl’s Girl, Dirty Epic/Cowgirl, and especially Dark & Long introduced B-sides, extended mixes, and variants that in some cases (“Mosaic”/”Deep Arch,” “Dirty Epic (Dirty Guitar)”) I found to be superior to the ones on the albums.
But I kept coming back to Dubnobasswithmyheadman. The song structures, instrumentation and the way the album’s energy moves from peak to trough made it a favorite for almost any occasion from heading out on the town to a late night session with close friends. It’s hard to believe it was released twenty years ago, but the reality of the calendar seems to be trumping my telescoped perception of time more and more frequently these days (also twenty years ago: Warp’s Artifical Intelligence II, Orbus Terrarum, the first Dom & Roland 12″, Orbital Snivilisation). On the occasion of its second decade, according to the presser, it’s been “meticulously” remastered at Abbey Road Studios and Rick Smith “revisited the original MIDI files [and] uncovered a wealth of previously unreleased material”.
The resulting package is a pretty massive undertaking: six hours of music over forty-one tracks, spanning five CDs. As an aside, this is the first time I’ve reviewed such a closely-guarded release and the technology at play was very interesting: I had to download a special Universal Music DRM player that required a login, could only stream while connected to the server, and was assured that there was an “inaudible, unique watermark” on my copy of the streams. Punishment for piracy would, it was implied, be meted out by tag-teams of hitman ninjas and lawyers.
Dutifully connected to the streamer, I started trying to make sense of the sprawl. There are really two sets of material here: things which have seen release before (like the DNBWMHM album itself and the collected b-sides), then there’s the unreleased material which spans the last two CDs. For the first category, I imagine the interest to the reader lies mainly in the differences between the originals and the remasters; for the second, it’s more about whether there are some gems buried in the jams and what form those might take.
After my initial listen to the remastered album tracks, I went back to the CD and re-ripped it to MP3 with V0 VBR quality because my library was from an earlier, vanished time when 128bit was the best trade-off between sound quality and precious hard drive space. I flipped back and forth between the new and old versions of each song several times and had to call in some second opinions. It’s not that there is a giant difference in the remaster; it’s not like, for example, Robert Fripp and David Sylvian’s two versions of the Damage live album, where they took the same source material and produced vastly different
interpretations of the songs.
But there are differences, some of which are easy to describe and some of which make me feel like one of those credulous assholes who write glowing reviews of $500 USB “audio” cables on Amazon. Overall, a murkiness has been cleaned up off the individual instruments and vocals, which is interesting because I didn’t really notice its presence until it was gone—that was just how the album sounded. But there’s definitely enhanced clarity that causes little sonic details like the looped vocal phrases deep in the mix of “Dark and Long” or the tititular sub-sonics in “River of Bass” to emerge suddenly and make you think, “Huh, that’s interesting, I never noticed that before.” (On an album I’ve easily listened to two hundred times over the last twenty years, this is no mean feat.) “Surfboy” fares especially well from this scrub-till-it-squeaks treatment, with the electro punch on the kick drum and washy dub fx on the snare hits gaining clarity and separation. See, there I go with the audiophile snakeoil—but it honestly does sound a lot better.
Aside from “soundstage, transparency and depth” bollocks, I’m trying to ignore the history and listen to the album with fresh ears as an album and it holds up quite well. There’s still a great ebb and flow between the upbeat and chill tracks and Karl Hyde’s lyrics are abstract enough that they don’t date themselves with outdated pop culture references (even if they did, at this point they’d probably be ironically retro). The beats still hit hard when they’re meant to, like on “Spoonman”‘s hard techno thump, and soothe when they’re not—”Tongue”‘s guitar stylings and the long runout groove on “River of Bass” usher in a sublime ambient air. “Can you feel me like I feel you?” asks the roboticised voice on album closer “M.E.”. Yes, yes I can, perhaps with slightly better fidelity than I could before.
As far as the b-side reissues go, there’s obviously a wider range in style and quality since their origins are so diverse. The early singles that start off CD2 (“The Hump (Wild Beast)” and “Eclipse”) are almost comical in their proto-techno “we just heard the KLF for the first time” earnestness and simplicity. They serve a purpose as an historical artifact and an anchor for what’s to come, but… wow, those presets! Those handclaps! CD2 then includes a generous collection of cuts pulled from the “Dark & Long” and “Dirty Epic” EPs, plus a nice rarity in “Spikee” which was only on a 12″. It’s not clear to me whether these tracks were remastered as well or simply re-issued: they do sound fantastic, but close A/B listening for the CDs I have on hand does not reveal the same sea-change compared to the originals as the album tracks do.
CD3 has more singles and b-sides, notable from a trainspotting perspective for the inclusion of a couple of unusual mixes like the “Most ‘ospitable” mix of “Dark & Long” and the “(Telegraph 16.11.92)” and “Jam Scraper” mixes of “Skyscraper” which were (according to discogs.com—please don’t think I have all of this in my head!) previously only on the UK 12″ of “Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You”. Personally, I’m very happy to see the inclusion of “Thing in a Book” on this disc. It’s a twenty-minute long, moody noodle on “Dark & Long” that originally appeared on the UK Dark & Long EP—an import which, I will note, I bought no less than three times as my copies kept mysteriously disappearing after late night listening sessions. Its first seven minutes are a smooth beatless crescendo that gets the heads nodding in unison for the deep house workout on the back half. The last buildup, around minute fourteen, is absolutely ecstatic. It’s some of the best instrumental electronic music to come out of the 90s, and I’m thrilled that Underworld chose to include it here.
I had a little trepidation moving into the last two CDs. Oftentimes, a dump of “previously unreleased” material countermands the band’s better judgment which led to the stuff not being released in the first place. There is certainly some of that on display: the band’s home recordings like “Cowgirl(AltCowgirlC69MixfromA1564)” are probably mainly of interest in context rather than as something truly “new.” You can hear Hyde working out his vocal chops and lyrical ideas, how he complements Rick Smith and Darren Emerson’s interlocking machines with the near-monotone free association that would become their signature for the next decade. “You got the brain / you got use of the brain this week,” he intones. It’s not significantly different to the “Shouting lager / lager / lager” refrain that turned “Born Slippy” into an anthem, but it lacks editing and practice—that’s why it’s a demo.
Other unreleased tracks fare better. The “Dirty Ambi Piano” mix of “Skyscraper” on CD4 is just about perfect and stands up well against the released mixes. The improvs on CD5 show the recombination and reinvention that became hallmarks of the epic Underworld live show: vocal samples and melodies showing up in odd places to signal a transition, the persistent 4/4 kick drum thump augmented by rolling percussion and synth lines, improvised interludes blending one track into another. Indeed, this last disc is perhaps best experienced as an early live performance, rough edges and all, an artifact of a trio which was learning how to work together and which would emerge from these sessions with material honed to a gleaming edge. The last track on CD5 starts out as a dubbed-out “Spoonman” that, over the course of its eighteen minutes, shows all of the elements that would propel Underworld to fame. You can hear what sounds like ten or fifteen people in the background, hooting and whistling, perhaps aware they were watching the audio equivalent of gaseous infall, a protostar in the making… or perhaps just dancing their asses off.
The Dubnobasswithmyheadman reissue is undeniably expansive. If it were only the remaster, or maybe that plus a mining of deeper b-sides into a 2-CD set (as 2003’s “1992-2002” aimed to be), it might have fallen into an uncanny valley between “too expensive” and “collectors only.” But by including keenly curated cuts and a record of the band figuring it out (and getting it mostly right!) along with the crystalline audio improvements in the final product, Underworld produced a very unusual artifact: a five CD, six-hour reissue that rewards the listener with a complete picture of the way they—and we—were.
For my part, I’ve tried to not get lost in a nostalgic swirl for the heady days of the mid-90s… and mostly succeeded. Obviously we can’t go back but for me, the lovely gift of this release is the fond reminder of that cozy flat in Brighton, when it seemed like the right combination of techno and HTML could change the world.
The Dubnobasswithmyheadman reissue is available now from Undeworldlive.com, both as a remastered album only and the Super Deluxe version reviewed here.
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