Architecture for the blind (shouting lager lager lager)
I’ve been listening to a lot of Underworld lately, especially in the car, but also when I work out, and both for the same reason: because it staves off the winter doldrums and gets me motivated to run for thirty minutes or to be on time to various appointments or to navigate the slushy Minneapolis byways with something approaching optimism, but also because Underworld have always been and remain my favorite purveyors of electronic music, and I’ve always loved Karl Hyde’s lyrics, and I can’t stop listening to their excellent and epic RiverRun project from 2005-06, and because for my listening dollar, Underworld have always consistently and brilliantly bridged the great divide between drug-fueled, hyperactive, techno music and really gorgeous, sprawling, meaningful, poignant pop and/but also downtempo/ambient music.
I listen to songs like “Born Slippy” with not a little wistfulness, remembering a time when I cleaved far more ardently to the former genre I’ve sloppily described in the above graf than to the latter; when I wore baggy clothes and actually purchased CDs and went to bars to dance rather than drink; and appreciated really obnoxious house music without irony; and thought that the appearance on the scene of people like the Chemical Brothers and Orbital and, yes, Underworld, was truly the beginning of the Next Big Thing in Music, and also because MTV had replaced “120 Minutes” with “AMP” and Spin and Rolling Stone were pronouncing alternative rock and other music made with guitars not just obsolete but deader than Kurt Cobain. (Or if you rocked the SAT, techno : grunge :: punk : prog.) And because I was a sophomore in college and about to turn twenty-one and the end of the millennium was fast approaching and I was going dancing at least once a week and using big important words in my term papers and listening to Second Toughest In The Infants, it really felt like anything was possible.
Of course in retrospect, techno music, especially house music, was even back then nearing obsolescence and perhaps entering what could be termed its “post-” era, which Underworld was actually pretty instrumental in ushering in, because they had already long ago grown weary of the sugar-rush, four-on-the-floor rave-ups with synths that resembled klaxons, and were casting their gaze toward Reich’s minimalism (”Rez”) and Eno’s ambient (”Stagger”) and even good old-fashioned pop structures (”Bruce Lee”) and renovating the house that house built, without completely tearing it down. Old-fashioned dance music still has its place, I suppose, but I tend to enjoy it more like one enjoys eating sugarcubes or watching eight consecutive episodes of the Simpsons—that is, rarely and with some remorse. At this point, Underworld and their progeny—downtempo, minimal house, the stuff I go to hear Andrew play at posh downtown eateries, Herbert, etc—is far more palatable to this old fart.
And I know all of the preceding will be of interest to exactly 1.3 people out there, and for that I’m sorry, but I just drank about five cups of coffee and was listening to “Jumbo” and thinking about Martin Luther King, and this felt correct.
Posted: January 15th, 2007 under Music.
Comments: 5
Comments
Comment from Andrew
Time: 16 January 2007, 02:45
On the deep house page (www.deephousepage.com) many househeads– “‘heads” for short –seem obsessed with the idea that house is dead or dying. They come right out and say it, even while posting on a lively message board with more than 8,000 members: “house is dead.” This sense of crisis within the scene and genre is also apparent in all the finger-pointing tendencies and concern about “keeping it real” or “staying deep” or saying about this record or that person “that’s house” and “he’s house.”
So there is a sense among those who know and care about the earliest forms electronic dance music (disco and house) that things are winding down. Simply put, people just don’t care anymore. For many reasons, including those you mention, people have moved on. It’s increasingly hard to find a good party; deejays act like pompous assholes, doormen act like police officers, and the men and the women at the bar seem to care far more about looking cool than getting down. “Born Slippy” makes me nostalgic, too. And another song, Dubtribe’s “We Used to Dance”–which captures what I’m trying to say perfectly. Due to piracy and the public’s souring on electronic music some of the best labels of the 90’s have gone under and some of the best underground producers have grown frustrated and sought out “real jobs.” Even as the scene has become at best a mockery of what it once was, I still can’t help but think that house is far from dead, that the genre is in fact thriving. The quantity of good music being put every month never ceases to amaze me. Of course it is buried under more and more awful releases, produced by anyone with a laptop, a dime bag, and plenty of free time. (This flood of mediocre releases has had as much to do with the folding of countless independent record stores as the development of CD turntables, in my opinion—but that’s another story.)
People on the DHP like to assign blame for all the bad deejays and bad parties and bad vibes. I can’t really blame them. Something that was a very intimate, important part of growing up for a vast urban subculture has gone bad, in their opinion, and I’m often tempted to agree with them. Someone—the ego-tripping deejays, the greedy promoters, the stylish, velvet rope “clubbers” that make the floor more about fashion than dance—someone must be responsible. And ‘heads, normally a very opinioned bunch of musical know-it-all’s (this makes sense when you consider that all but the very best deejays are more music critics than musicians, and there’s no convincing argument as to why one person’s opinion of what’s “dope” is any more valid than another’s) point fingers. But the music–what it was supposedly all about from the get-go–is still very good, perhaps better than ever. House has gone underground once again, where it probably belongs. My only hope is that the people who used to dance will give us a second chance again sometime. And I hope, on the day we get Mr. Mohan back on the floor, that we do better.
Comment from Jake
Time: 16 January 2007, 10:27
Wow. Best comment ever. Thanks for weighing in. You will get me out on the dance floor soon.
Comment from sara eilert
Time: 16 January 2007, 19:11
I just listened to Underworld, dubnobasswithmyheadman to work out to the other day.
I had the same feelings you had.
Which ones?
All of them.
I bought that album in Belgium.
I listened to it, Sleater-Kinney’s One Beat
and the Smiths’ Strangeways Here We Come
all semester long.
It was a beautiful, strange semester.
Comment from Jake
Time: 16 January 2007, 22:40
Yes! Underworld is the best thing that ever happened to my fitness regimen.
Well, that and all the steroids.
Comment from Phil
Time: 3 October 2008, 16:46
Ah yes, I was in grad school, and then part of the .com gold rush in San Francisco, during those times, and I too felt that pretty much anything was possible. There was a utopian sensibility in the music and the culture that surrounded it, and I found it to be powerfully inspiring. But, for me, September 11, 2001 was what killed the dream. The Rave Act that was before Congress at the time only seemed to intensify and unite people around the idea that we were doing something culturally significant, but when those planes hit the Twin Towers the national mood turned on a dime. When I came back to San Francisco from the East Coast during Christmas 2001 I noticed that all the psy-trance kids had traded in their happy flouro colors for dark alien stormtrooper outfits, and I knew it was over.
In San Francisco today house is, if not dead, looking pretty feeble; some of the most stalwart house nights and clubs are gone, and the only places you really hear house now are in the kinds of places that cater to the bottle service crowd. Disco house is definitely enjoying a resurgence, especially in the gay scene, but it carries with it more nostalgia than optimism. Minimal techno and tech house are doing pretty well, and growing, but again the vibe is more about being cool and sophisticated than raving your head off and thinking that coming together over this music might mean something.
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