School's out. Underworld are back and ready to play. Time to down rulers
and dump the rules about how to create, consume and categorize dance music.
The beautifully blurred clarity of the Underworld playworld; germinated,
perfected, dissected, stretched and re-pollinated over their ten-year reign
as The Planet's Most Inventive Producers Of Free Electronics; is once again
open for visitors.

Three years on from their last studio album, and two years after the
release of their award winning DVD ('Everything, Everything'), the fourth
Underworld album arrives in 2002 bearing the title 'A Hundred Days Off'. It
glows healthily with evidence that after ten years of summoning up the
highest quality dance rooted music around, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith can
still do it with dignity - and crucially, after the departure of long
serving DJ colleague Darren Emerson, they can still clean up on the
dancefloor.

Smith/Hyde Productions went on a drift dive for 'A Hundred Days Off'.
Deliberately freeing themselves to make whatever kind of music their muse
dictated, they floated into uncharted waters and then, paradoxically found
a way to re-connect with their core virtues. Recognizably Underworld, it's
also a more sensual version. The great locked-in grooves shift and
dissolve, giving way to looped blues and installation-music calm. Techno
kinetics fuse with carnival percussion. Soulful, sexy and supple, they have
again created a soundscape for the times. This sounds a like a record made
by people who feel alright with themselves, sounding less 'under', and more
'world'.

'A Hundred Days Off' is a form of re-birth for singer/producer Hyde and
producer/producer Smith, both in terms of music and attitude. Enjoyment has
been prioritized. Feeling good has been sanctioned. Such was the momentum
created by their singular ability to tap into the energies of turn-of the
decade 80's acid house, that they somewhat hurtled through the last 10
years or so. From a DIY starter single in 1990, via the poignant,
groundbreaking and frankly, stunning debut techno/guitar album
'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' in '93, they swiftly ascended to 'generation
soundtracker' status, aided by the million-selling 1996 Trainspotting-
featured, accidental hit 'Born Slippy (Nuxx)'.

Of all the rave spawned supergroups of the 90s, Underworld turned into the
most elegant live phenomenon. They became the touchstone of 'high-end
electronica', pushing for a better quality delirium, with Karl as frontman;
the finest embodiment of earthly soul as vessel outside of a gospel church.
Live shows were definitive; Karl the 'cipherboy/neurobyteman' transported
by a flux of power; and Emerson and Smith jamming and coaxing the music so
it planed like Moroder in a bobsled.

Underworld's music as we knew it across ensuing albums, was also uniquely
human for a supposed techno band. They got into the cracks of moods that
dance music rolled over. They were never simply futuristic and gleaming.
You could hear the city whisper in their songs. Its lonesome KFCs and
deserted Tube stations. There were teeth strewn about in Karl Hyde's memory
trigger, moment-trawling word-bites. This was dance music that allowed you
to 'have it', or chill, depending on the tune, but also let your mind romp.
No other band, let alone 'dance band', were so beautifully opaque.

As God mixed the last decade into the new millennium, Underworld finished
off the touring that had run on from their third album, the Mercury Prize
nominated, foxy and contemplative 'Beaucoup Fish'. The final show was in
Tokyo in November 2000. Along the way Darren Emerson decided to make a
commitment to his own music and DJing career. For the first time ever, Rick
and Karl were playing as a duo, and despite early nerves, found at their
London Astoria two-piece debut, that their live strengths were undiminished
and their fans were just as ardent. A new equilibrium was established as
they settled back into the studio in their home territory of Romford, Essex
to finish work on the book-ending Underworld DVD and live album
'Everything, Everything', and to plan for recording. The next phase of
Underworld was underway.

"With this album we decided to close everything down except doing the
album," says Rick. "Because we've never done that before. In the last ten
years we'd always been open to projects with Tomato or doing remixes or
working with other people. Always there'd be more than one thing happening
at once, and with this one we thought, it's time to stop everything and
just dwell on making a record. The idea was to follow our noses for six
months of writing and see where it led us."

"The DVD closed a chapter for me," explains Karl. "I guess I'd always been
holding on to the idea of let's keep this thing going, let's perpetuate
this thing that we'd started in the early 90s, because some people might
not have seen it, and we were on a roll. Eventually that felt quite
draining. And when the DVD happened it was such a definitive document of
where that group had arrived, at that point, that it felt like we could
close a chapter.'

"So for myself, psychologically, there wasn't a sense of needing to
perpetuate anything, or hold onto anything. It was a bit like starting the
group all over again in a way. Which it kind of was, and wasn't. Because
we'd been together 22 years and it hadn't been just the two of us. So there
was a sense of a real unburdening and then just cutting loose and saying
lets try anything and see where we go.

"In a way there was a sense of relief when Darren left, because then all
three of us could all get on and do the things that we wanted to do without
some of the tensions that had been increasing over the years. He got on to
do whatever he wanted, completely unhindered and so did we, and in all the
years we've been making albums together I haven't known an album be so
light on stress as this one."

Focusing on just the music was not as easy as Karl and Rick had hoped.
Mixes and live shows could be turned down painlessly. The offer which
arrived to set up an installation in Japan was harder to reject. Years of
looking for opportunities to blend the band's sound aesthetics with ideas
circulating in Tomato (the multi-media design agency they helped found)
meant the concept was tempting.

"But then you look at it and go, yeah, but what we do is music, and our
primary objective is to communicate through music," says Karl. "So that for
myself was a focusing moment."

There were further problems with Underworld getting the creative blinkers
on. There were internet broadcasts to research. The website linked through
the DVD -Underworldlive.com - was demanding audio and visual input. Karl
had his work cut out supplying the 365 photos of couches (!) he'd promised
to the site (not to mention the images of abandoned cars he was collating
for his own pleasure).

Then in the early phase of recording, the attempt to continue the live vibe
of jamming 'celebratory, 'full force' style tunes proved unworkable. The
more 'banging' pieces only came once they'd given up, and"got comfortable
with the fact that we were making music which wasn't our expectation", and
decided to work on more ambient ideas. The gestation of the album may have
been unstressed but the perversity of Underworlds work process was as
present as ever. At one stage 'A Hundred Days Off' looking like a quadruple
album. Then just at the point Karl decided he couldn't tolerate a more
condensed record, Rick set his heart on a tight 10 tracker. 'A Hundred Days
Off' adds a further paradox to those already established. The Kings Of Robo-
electronica with the 'art nutter' poetry; the 80's blokes signing the
future of music and the experimental musos with the chart hits; took a
closer interest in natural rhythms and world music this time.

"A big difference with this record was the amount of music I was getting
played by Karl and Steve (Hall - from their label JBO) particularly," says
Rick. "And unlike any other album before, this was very different. There
was this incredible diversity of material which was fantastic most of the
time - world music, beautiful recordings of indigenous tribes playing god
knows what; really great stuff. In terms of going out, I did less than I've
ever done, but in terms of what was inspiring it was fantastic, this
realization that there was a whole world of music out there."

With breakbeat dissection taking a backseat to real instruments and the
palette expanded with the odd trip to 'Ray Man's Percussion Shop' to buy
'toys', the album evolved in an atmosphere of relative contentment. Perhaps
that's why the darker currents swirling through tracks like those on
'Second Toughest...' are less evident this time. In the broadest sense,
'100 Days Off' is a soulful record. It starts where you might expect an
Underworld record to begin, with Karl intoning "I dreamed that I'd become
chemical," over the surging kinetics of 'Momove'. Even here, though,
there's a Brazilian rhythmic undertow. 'Two Months Off' kicks hard, but
isn't there an echo of rejoicing (wedding) bells in there, as Karl sings
'You bring light" over and over.

For each funky symphonic tech-epic ('Little Speaker'*), heavily spiked
motortechno groove ('Dinosaur Adventure), and shadowy stomper - ('Luetin')
there's a brace of warm dippers. 'Trim' is looped, nearly straight, folk-
blues (with a genius Hyde micro-lyric "Hey classic Coca-Cola!"). 'Ess Gee'
is a pearl of softness. 'Sola Sistim' sets a self-doubting lyric against
huggable phunk. The famously complex and unfathomable Underworld working
process clearly benefited from the relaxed approach, hinted at in the
album's title.

"The title was something that one of the kids came up with that really
amused us because it was such a universal notion," explains Rick. "We were
talking about taking time off and they were like, 'Wouldn't it be great if
you only had to go to school one day, and it'd be great for the teachers
because they'd get loads of time off and they wouldn't have to work so
hard!'
"So its justifying this notion that you only go to school for one day in
every hundred. And it's got such a universal application. And then there's
that track 'Two Months Off'. So we're quite obsessed with this notion. But
in a way, it goes quite deep. When we started ten years ago, even at
Tomato, and we asked each other what you want to do? For Karl and I, it was
simply to enjoy what we did, and now we've done it for ten years, and you
have to make choices about how to do it.

"There's a lot about this business that conspires to grind you down to the
point where you'd better take a fuckin' break, because you're really washed
out now, so the quality of life and relaxation is important, because its
your state of mind when you turn up in a studio."

The mindframe of Underworld though the '90s was hugely affected by their
80s experiences as funk pop freaks Freur. Kraftwerk and dub fan Rick had
met art student Karl at Cardiff University and graduated to surface pop
success with 'learning curve' band. Freur had a number one Euro hit but by
the end of the '80s had crashed out the other side. A still funky early
incarnation of Underworld had gone nowhere. In 1990 Rick and Karl were
broke in Romford, sick of the fake end of the music business and as the
effects of acid house and ecstasy spread, starting to try out open framed
electronic music.

The early involvement of local boy and rising DJ Darren Emerson helped them
convert on the dancefloor. With a legendary 10 hour set at Glastonbury
festival, aka 12 inches as Lemon Interupt and an alliance with JBO, they
started a chain reaction which had them oscillating between the underground
and mass success for ten years. From the inside it was a decade of
megagigs, American tours, drink and no drink, exhaustion, delirium,
separate studios, movie soundtrack typecasting, side projects, U2, art
movies, failed self explanation, retreats and advances. From the outside it
was a catenation of dazzling, puzzling, mostly uplifting tunes, from 'Mmm
Skyscraper' and 'Dark And Long' through 'Born Slippy', 'Push Upstairs' and
'King Of Snake'. They were the conscience of dance music, but a lot more
fun.

"We were very much part of the scene I think for a short period of time,"
says Karl. "And then for a bit longer than that we belonged to dance music,
and in some ways people like us are to blame for blurring the distinction
between genres and that's been good for us. Its enabled us to get across to
a wider audience, and as the audience that we did have in the beginning has
fragmented, we've managed to cross over to a lot more people.
"Dance music was the first thing that was really focussed for me, because
when you said you were into rock or into pop or funk or any of those
things, we weren't really, and they were so general. When it became about
making music that was to do a specific job - and I don't mean that as a
soulless activity - people voted with their feet. They got on the dance
floor because we put out a good record, or not. And that experience was
really rare for us. Before, it had been only marketing people who had said
this is going to be great, the people who added up the numbers and it
turned into an equation that looked on paper as if it was going to do OK.
"We dispensed with all of that and became part of something that was very
immediate. Make something, take it to a club, play it and you got a
reaction. And it was such a simple experience, there was nothing vague
about it, and it stuck with is. And its translated into live - What works?
This works!"

Underworld clearly transcended simple efficacy a longtime ago. The
remarkable thing about their current state, is that even after the long
years of learning and exploring, they are further from a musical formula
than ever. For Rick, the fourth Underworld album has been another series of
discoveries, leaving him hungry to make the next record, instead of sapped
of ideas.

"Its absurd the notion that we can get a grip and choose a direction," he
says. "The music that we make is such a collision of accidents. We've done
technical magazine interviews because you want to try and put the record
straight and describe the working process, but its absolutely fucking
useless, its no clearer in the end, because the truth is we don't know how
we do what we do.

"I sometimes wish that it was simpler, and I know Karl does. You sometimes
wish you were a straight up blues band or Carlos Santana or Paul Oakenfold,
and go 'Look. This is what I do...' But sometimes the things that people
think are great about Underworld are the things that actually give us
problems.

"But it feels great to be finishing now, just to get out and play live and
have less of the Romford studio experience where everything's calm. It's
good to get out there now, because there are a different set of givens.
Like its Saturday night and you're on at 9 o'clock. Are you going to do any
ambient music? You've got to be fuckin' joking! We've got no desire to turn
into Pink Floyd yet. Its party time."

Back where they belong, at the center of the dirty discourse about where
the good music is in 2002, (and what constitutes a top night out),
Underworld are re-aligned and recharged. The jamming is good again. They're
back to big production live shows, and set to tour, kicking off with the
summer Creamfields Festival in the UK in August. They have a whole studio
to relocate, many half ideas to pursue, and two happily integrated, whole
lives to lead.

"I think as long as we have the capacity to surprise one another and
embrace change, the doors are open," says Karl. "It's kind of been about
that for the last ten years whereas it wasn't really about that before. I
feel really lucky that its gone on this long; to have come through two
careers prior to this and then the last ten years and we're still here and
still getting off on it. How does that work?"

It's not something to figure out on a schoolday. The best thing about
Underworld might well be the 'not knowing how', 'whether exactly', or
'whatever next'...

(*fact fans will be glad to discover that the spoken vocals on 'Little
Speaker' and 'Two Months Off' are from Juanita, the very same lady
immortalized by, but not featured on 'Juanita', track one of 'Second
Toughest' - "From inspiration to featured vocalist in two albums!" Steve
Hall.)