Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

Pfft. Oblivion with Bells was thoughtful, moody and gorgeous.

Barking has about has much soul as a plastic bag, comparatively speaking.

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

The notes in the box set explain that the alternative versions are not the point at which they were handed over to guest producers......

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

On the whole, I agree - despite it being the most unusual for them, my immediate response was Louisiana is the most Underworld track on the record.
I have two problems with the album - the beats are oversimplistic, and the vocals are a bit samey: where are the spoken tracks, or the vocal effects? Obviously it's an intentional move to make a poppier sounding record with more obvious vocals, but the variation in style was one thing I've always enjoyed in Underworld.
Oh, and they butchered Moon In Water. Or maybe High Contrast did.
Otherwise, I enjoyed the first disc a lot, a nice album, not their best, not groundbreaking, but some good songs definitely. Now for the second disc.

OWB is my favourite Underworld album, actually. But I tend to listen to more ambient music than techno and house, so that makes sense.

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

OWB is pretty good. Their first two albums in the MK II era are by far my favorites by them, but I really like BF and OWB; I feel that BF edges out OWB just a bit for me. Maybe if some of the weaker tracks on OWB were replaced with Parc and Food A Ready, it may have ranked third for me.

Barking is solid, but I have it ranked sixth currently. It can grow on me more, though, for sure. AHDO grew on me over the course of some years. Initially I was disapointed with AHDO (I still liked it, don't get me wrong), but a few years later I just...was more fond of it and simply liked it more.

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

Another thing I realised - the titles are a bit poppy in a way, aren't they? I know they've often changed song names from working titles to the finished product, but the releases have always had those strange, disjointed titles which I love. Many of the songs had more 'Underworld' titles to start with - You Do Scribble, Telematic Peal, Jumping The Cran - which were simplified or changed to titles which are a lot more 'normal' or even generic. Grace is a lot less UW than Telematic Peal.
Just a thought.

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

you mean apart from the looped vocal sample in Bird 1, the vocoder In ALAF, or the pitch warble in Louisiana, the weird high-pitched background vocal in Grace, or the computer-y (spoken) voice in Moon In Water, the spoken word sample in Hamburg Hotel or the spoken bit in Scribble? ;)

lots of stuff going on with the vocals on Barking I'd say...

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

It's not all that great actually. We have a bunch more cities starting with The (or Den in sort of archaic dutch) like Den Bosch or Den Helder although I don't think these tend to be translated like Den Haag/The Hague does.
Of course in englsih translation our whole country has a "The" as the first part of the name: The Netherlands, and we are definitely pretty cool :)

(Sorry, totally OT again ;))

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

I mean like Born Slippy, Cowgirl, Pearl's Girl, Ring Road, Beautiful Burnout, Oich Oich, Push Upstairs, King Of Snake, Moaner, Puppies, Peggy Sussed, JAL to Tokyo...
No, you're right, there are effects, but they seem more like additional touches rather than the huge variation of style and texture on the vocals before now.
To put it plainer: the vocals are all sung, clearly, and the lyrics are mostly very decipherable. Before, you'd get something like that followed by Karl ranting incoherently and sounding quite angry or something.

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

for some reason, "the hague" creeps me out. just the fact that it is central to the world criminal court and many UN operations. i can see it as a 1984-style centre of global totalitarianism someday.

Re: Barking -- Some general thoughts
 

maybe i'm missing something, but this seems as far from uw as anything i've heard. it's like a band trying way too hard to be underworld.

there are some absolute stinkers here - particularly alaf - it sounds so, thin and alien - hard to believe i'm listening to uw, to be honest...

maybe i'm too old for this?!

i like bird 1,hamburg hotel and moon on water - otherwise, it feels like it's trying to do what uw have always steered clear of ie tried to play to the audience, rather than give them something new to chew on. i mean - massive eurphoric stabs of 'between stars' - no wonder karl was having a love-in with dave pearce.

lovely for the kidz maybe , but with the veryhonourable exceptions mentioned, i just can't swallow this.

sad to note; the best 2 tracks they've been doing live in recent times, 'downpipe' and 'can u feel this bass' made me very optimistic for this release - turns out they're just playing other people's grooves: and they're own ones are barking up the wrong tree.

quite a let-down - though better than ahdo by an essex country mile...