Underworld’s timing couldn’t be better. Next month, its fifth album, “Oblivion With Bells,” will be released — smack-dab in the middle of resurgent interest in the duo’s brand of dance music in the U.S.
“It’s fascinating to watch,” frontman Karl Hyde says of America’s rediscovery of electronic music from acts such as Daft Punk. “And it’s great to be around to enjoy it.”
Hyde, 50, and his 39-year-old bandmate, Rick Smith, are unlikely torchbearers in this re-energized scene. Smith resembles a disheveled physics professor; Hyde is nearly indistinguishable from any middle-aged British soccer fan watching a match at his local pub.
But make no mistake: Hyde and Smith still are hip. After all, these are the men behind one of the seminal dance tracks of the 1990s (“Born Slippy”), and Underworld has been leading hundreds of thousands of rave-happy kids around the world into altered states of consciousness for 15 years.
“It is still extraordinary to us that we can turn up in places like Sao Paolo and Moscow and play to thousands there,” Hyde says.
Underworld’s reputation as a live act (well-documented on their DVD “Everything, Everything”) has set them apart. While other electronic crossover acts, such as the Chemical Brothers, rely almost entirely on music and stock visuals during shows, Underworld works a crowd — mixing innovative real-time camera work with exotic typographical elements projected onto large screens.
Hyde calls it “video jamming.” While the big-screen graphics are eye-catching, the vocalist may be the duo’s secret weapon live, dancing like a man possessed as he eggs on wallflowers.
“I try and stay in shape,” Hyde says, adding with a chuckle, “I’m usually a lot fitter when I come off a long tour.”
It’s not Hyde’s antics that draw crowds, it’s the music. Underworld’s multilayered sound, which borrows liberally from house, techno, jazz and ambient genres, has won the duo (down from a trio since DJ Darren Emerson left the group in 2000) legions of fans over the years. And “Oblivion With Bells” marks a measured — and ambient-leaning — return.
Anticipation for “Bells” remains high — the duo hasn’t released a proper studio album in five years — although there has been no shortage of output. The band has been prolific since its last U.S. release, 2002’s “A Hundred Days Off,” but casual U.S. fans have heard little of it.
“We’ve been busy finding other ways of releasing material,” he says. “We actually released lots of music [recently]; three albums that were download only, five 12-inch singles and two film scores.”
It was part of an effort to keep Underworld’s sound fresh.
“We had to break away and start doing things like the downloads in order to get us to a place where we were excited [about music] again,” Hyde says. “The album/tour formula might have been successful in 2002, but it was a formula, and to us it was the kiss of death.”
