CoolJunkie Interviews Underworld

August 5, 2009 12:03 PM
by Marcos Colón

If there’s one aspect of being a music artist that you have to acknowledge and appreciate, it’s the second word in that combo, artist. Now, while many of these individuals consider themselves artists, truth is they really haven’t experimented with the various forms of it. One thing for sure is, when it comes to the duo of Karl Hyd and Rick Smith, better known as Underworld, we really can’t think of any other music artists that truly fit the bill better. With the most outrageous and truly artful live shows in the electronic dance music world, Underworld are about to embark on a West Coast tour that will continue their legacy of pure live music. But they seem to think that they still haven’t reached the pinnacle of their live shows.

CoolJunkie recently had the pleasure of catching up with Underworld’s Karl Hyde and talked about their West Coast tour, new music in the works, and how 2010 may bring the states the biggest Underworld tour ever.

CoolJunkie: How’s the year treated you guys thus far?

Karl Hyde: Good! We’re not getting as much time to be in the studio as we would like, but the live shows have been going fantastic. The new equipment and the way that Rick has reconfigured everything has just made us more live than we’ve ever been. So shows have just become so much more extraordinary again. We’re really enjoying the shows and the new material that accompanies them. I also spent some time down in Sydney with Brian Eno doing show with him, while Rick’s been working on remixes up here.

CJ: You’re about to start a pretty special West Coast tour here in the states. What’s that feel like? I know you’ll be in Las Vegas, then you have San Francisco and LA.

Karl Hyde: it’s nice to come back to America. America is the hard core of what they call our dirty fans, which are the real beginnings of the hardcore web based community for us. America has always had a very devoted and hardcore following for Underworld so we really love coming back there. In the last couple of years we’ve really seen the scene expand quite significantly. The dance scene over there has really kicked off in the last couple of years.

CJ: Other than the shows themselves, what do you guys look forward to most when you go out on tour?

Karl Hyde: Getting to see places first hand. It was always a real eye opener when we first started to tour and we got to see places for ourselves that we’ve always heard about on the news. For one reason or another, everyone’s news always has a way to distort what a place is like, but traveling for your own self and seeing things first hand, you can make your own mind up when it comes to that. We’ve met some really great people in places that really haven’t been portrayed by the news all that well. But there are a lot of cool people all over the place. I like to get out on the street and I like to know what’s going on, and pick up the local flavor on what’s going on.

CJ: So is it fair to say that touring in a way also influences your music?

Karl Hyde: Oh yea, it does. For one you’re playing to people and trying new material, which is what we’re doing on this tour. We speak to people and we find out what they’re listening to and what records they’re buying. So when you’re out and you are touring, it’s your chance to speak to people one to one and find out what they’re into.

CJ: At the same time, what can be exhausting about the touring schedule?

Karl Hyde: Airports! Airports suck. We love tour buses, we really really love tour buses. Whenever we do tours and we have the busses and we’ve got the trucks and the catering and all of the crew, because we like to travel with the crew as well, we love all of that. But airports just suck.

CJ: You guys are about to do a very special gig at the Fox Oakland Theatre. You’re going to be broadcasting the gig live on iPhones?

Karl Hyde: We’ve been working with Apple for some years now, and particularly the guys at Quicktime have been giving us some huge support for our webcast and our TV webcast that we do from around the world. Those guys have open minds and they know that we’ve always delivered for them. Whenever we go out and do things for them, they tell us that they have cool new ideas. It’s such a buzz because you’re playing to a live audience but you’re also playing to the world, and that’s just electric.

CJ: What would you say sets your live shows a part from other artists out there?

Karl Hyde: We’re in no position to criticize any other artist. For us we chose to amalgamate some things the spontaneity of the best DJs that we saw back in the early 90s and the live jazz improvisations. We mashed all those things together and made a band that was about coming out and being a real band every night, improvising, but responding to the crowd like a DJ does. It’s a live band up there that plays the music differently every night, depending on how the crowd are. And when it comes to all the visuals and the sound system, that’s all improvised by all of the crew. We’re basically all jamming and we’re all getting off on each other, the band, the crew and audience. It’s a jam session but not one that just falls to pieces. We don’t know where it’s going to go, but we just take off the safety hatch and go for it every night.

CJ: Do you guys think you’ll be in the East Coast anytime soon?

Karl Hyde: There’s talk about coming back to the East Coast, but we want to come back to the US next year with a bigger tour. A more complete tour across America. By bus, because that’s the way to tour America, where you can get off on truck stops, and see deserts and see the countryside. If we don’t come back to the East Coast this year, then it’ll be because we’re planning a bigger tour there next year.

CJ: What can fans expect from you guys for the remainder of this year?

Karl Hyde: We just released a track with Mark Knight called Downpipe. We’re working on the new material, recording it, and processing that at the moment, so when people come to the shows they can record a better version of it than they can find on YouTube at the moment. There will be more webcasts and more activity through our Underworldlive.com site. More publishing of things, but we’re really preparing for the material that we’ll be rolling out next year. Then the project I did with Eno down in Sydney, three one and a half hour shows, that’s being sifted through at the moment and it could potentially be several albums. But right now me and Rick are hungry to be in the studio and working on the new material we have. It’s Underworld, but not Underworld looking backwards, it’s Underworld looking forward.

Click here to hear more from Underworld.