20. Eclipse (1992)
Released under the pseudonym Lemon Interupt, Eclipse is far more straightforward than the music Underworld would become best known for. In early 90s dance nomenclature, it’s a progressive house track, but a killer example of type: chugging, blissed-out and Balearic, decorated with female vocals and organ. An obscure delight.
19. Diamond Jigsaw (2010)
Barking was Underworld’s poppiest album and Diamond Jigsaw is as close as the band has come to traditional pop or rock, with Karl Hyde’s guitar to the fore. It’s a long way from Born Slippy, but it’s also a fantastic song; frankly, if a band released it as their debut single, people would go nuts.
18. Dinosaur Adventure 3D (2003)
Much of 2003’s A Hundred Days Off is subtle and subdued, but Dinosaur Adventure 3D bucks the overall mood. A relentlessly full-on techno-tinged banger, it’s proof that Underworld didn’t lose their dancefloor focus after the departure of Darren Emerson, the DJ who helped introduce Hyde and Rick Smith to dance music.
17. Dark & Long (1994)
One of Underworld’s key influences circa dubnobasswithmyheadman was Gil Scott-Heron’s 1981 single B-Movie. Smith in particular was captivated by the way it gradually stretched, building by tiny increments. You can hear its impact on the album’s superb, slowly unfolding opener Dark & Long, new sounds subtly appearing behind Hyde’s understated vocal.
16. Bells & Circles (2018)
Underworld weren’t the only dance act to seek out Iggy Pop’s services as a guest vocalist – he had previously worked with Death in Vegas and Fatboy Slim – but their collaborative EP is the best of the lot. Bells & Circles sets his declamatory vocals to rattling breakbeats and spectral electronics.
15. Doris (2019)
The year-long online music and video experiment Drift involved collaborations with everyone from Black Country New Road to the Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty. It offered a lot of material to wade through – seven CDs worth! – but it regularly repays the effort. Doris starts out as warm, cosseting ambience that gradually turns unsettling.
14. 8 Ball (2000)
Underworld’s long association with the director Danny Boyle began when the Trainspotting soundtrack propelled Born Slippy to vast success. For his subsequent adaptation of Alex Garland’s The Beach, they gave him the dreamy, recumbent 8 Ball. Decorated with sparkling acoustic guitar, it justifiably wound up on their 1992-2012 greatest hits compilation.
13. Shudder/King of Snake (1999)
Viewed in a certain light, you might call Shudder/King of Snake Underworld’s twisted take on a big hands-in-the-air piano house anthem. It races along at light-speed, underpinned by a frazzled I Feel Love-ish bassline, topped off with Hyde’s echoing vocal. The effect is exultant and disorientating.
12. And I Will Kiss (2012)
Of Underworld’s many contributions to the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, Caliban’s Dream was the hit, but And I Will Kiss – which apparently involved 1,200 musicians in its recording, the famed percussionist Evelyn Glennie among them – is the pick: an epic, emotive swirl of choral vocals, synthesisers, brass and other orchestration.
11. Ova Nova (2016)
The splendidly titled Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future was a return to peak Underworld form after a couple of coolly received albums. Its standout track, the delightful Ova Nova, opened with the line: “I’m chilled, I’m fresh, I’m home,” befitting its softer, warmer interpretation of Underworld’s sound.
10. Dune (2019)
The hugely appealing sound of Underworld delving into new musical territory decades into their career. Dune is effectively their idiosyncratic interpretation of an R&B slow jam, complete with a deeply peculiar spoken-word section. The beats edge along; the whole track sounds as if it’s melting into a warm, oozing pool of sound.
9. Denver Luna (2023)
You could say there is an echo of Born Slippy about the pounding drums and beatific synths of Underworld’s most recent single, but it’s far too thrilling to count as merely revisiting past glories. Its mood shifts from ominous to uplifted, the climax is ferocious, the a cappella bursts of Hyde’s multi-tracked vocodered vocals amazing.
8. Dirty Epic (1994)
Underworld’s transformation from unsuccessful mainstream pop band into something modern and unique was an astonishing 180-degree artistic turn. There is the ghost of a traditional pop song – with a chorus – in Dirty Epic, but it has been shattered and reassembled into nine bewitching minutes of strange, atmospheric, fragmented, propulsive music.
7. Mmm … Skyscraper I Love You (1993)
The single that announced a failed 80s pop band had come up with a completely different, entirely original way of doing things: its “tribal electronics” intended to evoke Canary Wharf in London, its rhythm influenced by a David Morales remix of the Thompson Twins, its lyrics fractured vignettes of New York.
6. Juanita: Kiteless: To Dream of Love (1996)
There’s something impressively uncompromising about the successor to Underworld’s 1994 breakthrough album, dubnobasswithmyheadman. Second Toughest in the Infants’ opening suite lasts nearly 17 minutes, a length its shapeshifting fully warrants. The journey from its pulsing opening to its twinkling beatless conclusion – via a burst of New Order-esque guitar – is completely enrapturing.
5. Pearl’s Girl (1996)
Much of Second Toughest bore the influence of drum’n’bass, most thrillingly on Pearl’s Girl. The gradual build of its lengthy intro is incredibly exciting; when Hyde’s voice finally appears, it’s bearing the fabulously out there opening line: “Rioja, Rioja, Reverend Al Green.”
4. Jumbo (1999)
Underworld have expressed reservations about their biggest-selling album, Beaucoup Fish – “a bit professional,” Hyde complained – but Jumbo is magnificent, an immersive stew of snapping, 140bpm rhythms, blissful electronics that seem influenced by Kraftwerk and Philip Glass, samples of Americans discussing purchasing a vest and Hyde’s lovely, melancholy vocal.
3. Born Slippy .Nuxx (1995)
The most uncommercial single ever to reach No 2 – a hammering kick drum, distorted vocals, some heavenly synth chords, but no melody line – Born Slippy was also widely misinterpreted, an oblique examination of Hyde’s troubled relationship with alcohol taken as a hedonist’s rallying cry thanks to its “lager, lager, lager” refrain.
2. Two Months Off (2002)
For all the Beefheartian weirdness of Hyde’s lyrics – randomly cut up by Smith to fit the music – Underworld can also provide straightforward euphoria, as on Two Months Off. The music surges, chatters and peals like church bells; Hyde’s vocals are pared-down, repetitious and love-struck.
1. Rez/Cowgirl (1993)
Underworld always reworked tracks in a way that went beyond standard dance music remixing, as if their catalogue was less a collection of songs than a set of ideas in constant flux – elements of 1992’s Eclipse reappeared 24 years later on Nylon Strung. Rez and Cowgirl represent the supreme example. The tracks clearly share the same roots – they are usually performed as a medley live – but they are completely distinctive in approach and mood. The instrumental Rez is simultaneously euphoric – that ascending keyboard line – and intense. The cut-vocal-driven Cowgirl, meanwhile, is hypnotic and darkly powerful. Take your pick: both are extraordinary.
• This article was amended shortly after publication to correct the caption on the final photograph. It features Karl Hyde and Darren Emerson, not Karl Hyde and Rick Smith as previously stated.
