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 Click for music events Jumbo thoughts Inside Karl Hyde's head
Sometimes, Karl Hyde just doesn't know what he's talking about.
No, it's not that Hyde is off his head. Far from it. Even as a
disembodied voice over a telephone line, Underworld's
lyricist/vocalist
is a current of creativity, a whirlpool of ideas following two years of
touring and this month's release of "Underworld Anthology:
1992-2002."
Best known for "Born Slippy," the 1996 track of dirty numb angel boys
which heart-pounded the film "Trainspotting" to its grinning
conclusion, Underworld stunned the UK dance scene with its 1994 debut
album "dubnobasswithmyheadman." "This is intelligent techno," the
British papers gasped.
Since then, Underworld--the brainchild of Hyde, sound master Rick
Smith, and Darren Emerson, who left in 1999 for a solo DJ career--has
become legendary for a techno sound carrying both furious intensity and
interpretive depth. And yet, sometimes Karl Hyde just doesn't know
what
he's talking about.
Take "Jumbo," a radiant favorite off 1999's "Beaucoup Fish."
Blurred pools of sound open up to a fat, confident bass line. They're
touched by a glimmering smile of melody, which then falls like a
lover's
departure. Hyde's surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics spool
open in a half-whisper: "I...need sugar. I need a little water, sugar.
I get thoughts about you, and my mind wants me like a little lost
child..." It's one of those rare tunes that embraces you, fills you
with the hopeful and disappointed essence of humanity, and alters your
fabric of being on the dance floor.
"When we put it on the album," Hyde says, "it was my least
favorite track."
What?
"I didn't get it. That's the point. I didn't get it. And if I
don't get something...I don't know how to attach myself to it in a
way
that I can translate it into something really positive." It wasn't
until "Jumbo" was performed live, Hyde says, that the track finally
made sense. "I don't even remember first performing it--but I do
remember the reaction. People were really joyous. And they did
then, what they do to this day: the whole crowd just kind of bounced,
very slightly, but en masse." He laughs. Karl Hyde laughs a lot, and
with exuberance. "It's really curious--they just kind of locked into
this really, really tight bounce with this beaming smile on their
faces,
and it was like, `Aahhhhh, I get it! I get it now. This is the
bit I was missing.' And it's become one of those quite special
moments
in the set for me."
"Jumbo" assumes its rightful place in the two-CD set "Anthology,"
along with club-shattering epics like "Moaner," "Shudder/King of
Snake," and "Two Months Off," arranged in context with rarities like
the harmonica-trilled, bluegrass-rave of "Bigmouth" and the
bittersweet techno-aria "8-Ball." It's a muscular collection,
detailing the band's most important tracks with respect to the
development of the UK dance scene. Curiously, though, it neglects a
lesser known--but arguably equally accomplished--aspect of
Underworld's
work: ambient and largely instrumental tracks, like "Headset" (on the
"Two Months Off" CD-single), which elevate beatless minimalism to a
symphonic capaciousness a la Phillip Glass.
"Another Rick Smith classic," Hyde replies, considering
"Headset." "This was originally going to be a three-CD set," he
explains, "and the third CD was going to be much more chilled. The
reason we didn't do that--and I think the collection is missing that
perspective--is that [it] would be so expensive, it would be ridiculous
to buy." He grows enthusiastic about the possibilities. "It's
something that Rick and I have talked about...going out and playing
only those [ambient] tracks, it would actually be a real breath
of fresh air. It would be nice to do it outside, in the open; get back
to doing gigs on mountains, on beaches, and look for interesting sites.
How nice it would be possibly to do two sets again, maybe something
early in the day, and something later at night..."
"I want to give you everything, I want to give you energy," Hyde
sings at the center of the hyperactive masterpiece "Cowgirl," and
he's
not kidding. Give Hyde a theme, he'll run with it; give Underworld an
idea, and it'll branch out relentlessly. Talking about the early days
of
Tomato, the award-winning design firm responsible for Underworld's
visual aesthetic, he says, "We were part of a collection of people who
made stuff. Sometimes it was advertising, sometimes it was fine arts,
but mostly it's been driven by a personal idea to make something,
regardless of there being a commission." What this has meant for
Underworld is a spirit of collaborative creativity--"photography,
writing, filming...what we call `The Work' now"--from sound
installations in European art galleries and Karl Hyde's newest book, a
surrealistic journaling of London entitled "The Belly of St. Paul,"
to
"wordimagesoundplay," a Playstation 2 game recently released,
dishearteningly, only in Japan. "The first country to understand the
connections between us and Tomato," Hyde explains.
The collaboration even extends to the group's website,
http://www.dirty.org, where legions of fans engage in a perpetual
debate
over Hyde's notoriously perplexing lyrics, which play games with
meaning. Is that "an eraser of love" in "Cowgirl," or "any razor
of
love"?
Hyde, naturally, refuses to answer. "I love it! When I hear and see
peoples' interpretations of what we do, it's the wave and the energy
coming back to us." "Underworld Anthology: 1992-2002" is out now. Read David
Schneider's complete interview with Karl Hyde here
Also by David Schneider Ontourage
Spin Control
Still hungry like a wolf
A different brew
Spin Control
Air born
To be or knot to be
Man at Work
Coming up dry
Sensuous Chicago: Taste
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