[khouri]

This was one of the most energetic American crowds I've ever seen for Underworld. Everyone was going nuts. The audio was great, all the songs sounded excellent. After the Dubnobass show in London and the shorter Hollywood Bowl show, I'd forgotten that Underworld delivered such long and high energy shows. Miles better than anything I attended during the Barking era too.

I Exhale
If Rah
Juanita
Ova Nova
Nylon Strung
Two Months Off
8 Ball
Jumbo
Ring Road/Minneapolis
Push Upstairs
King of Snake
Dirty Club
Low Burn
Rowla
Rez/Cowgirl
Nuxx

I Exhale + If Rah sounded great live and really got the crowd jumping. They're my least favorite songs on BB, but they made a kind of sense to me live that they don't on the record. Very enjoyable.

Juanita was the just album version with some small flourishes, effects and so forth, such as the "resonator" sample heard prominently on Everything Everything. The drums seemed really high in the mix in a good way. I really enjoyed it despite the lack of improv/deconstruction. They played the full 16-min version and it sounded marvelous.

Ova Nova + Nylon Strung did not work live, not for me anyway. Paradoxically, they're my favorite songs on BB. They just slowed everything down so much, I started yawning honestly.

Two Months Off was performed exactly as it has been for the last 14 years. The most boring weapon in Underworld's arsenal, but people still seem to go fucking nuts for it.

8 Ball was supremely disappointing live. I was sad when I didn't see Karl's guitar on stage at the start of the show but I didn't realize how dire it would be until this track, which has so many cool guitar parts. Effectively a karaoke performance.

Jumbo is always great to hear live but it's the same version we've all heard for nearly 20 years. I miss the way they played around with it on the Oblivion tour. That said, it still sounded wonderful in the theater and people loved it.

Ring Road/Minneapolis was beautiful. Karl was out of time for much of it but it was still exciting to see them go for it and play around with mixing elements of different tracks together. Despite the fact that they've been playing it on this tour, this arrangement felt live and fresh and a bit risky, the way a live band should sound.

Push Upstairs: Another fairly rote version but with Rick pushing different elements around in the mix. Hearing Push on a sound system remains a brilliant experience. Sounded wonderful, dark and dangerous.

King of Snake: Super energetic version. Dug it.

Dirty Club: Like the Ring Road/Minneapolis mashup, this was a treat. A new arrangement, cross-polination of songs, hearing sounds from the ancient records brought into the future. I wish they'd take this approach with more of the repertoire.

Low Burn: Another karaoke version. There's got to be a proper 10 minute version of this song somewhere and one day I hope we hear it.

Rowla: Rick had some fun with this.

Rez/Cowgirl: Rick took some risks with this one, relative to the other songs. Lots of changes, effects and such. Cowgirl was a hybrid of the album version and the live version that Underworld's played forever. Sounded great.

Nuxx: Standard version. There's so much room to mess about with this song and they never do anymore.

Obviously I can't know exactly how Rick's new gear works but based on what I heard and observed, it seems like he is triggering and manipulating all the sounds live just like he used to -- but I'm honestly at a loss as to what end. If the goal is to reproduce the album arrangements as closely as possible, you hardly need to go through that trouble. I also think that it's no longer possible to segue between tracks. The segue between Ova Nova and Nylon Strung was such a hard cut that I suspect only one Ableton session is being loaded into the console at a time, and Darren just activated it on the beat.

Again, I can't presume to know what Rick's thinking is, but the end result is a distinctly not-live Underworld Live. Very few surprises, no flow from one song to another, no "conversation" as Karl has described it. These shows are really electronic music recitals -- of uncommonly brilliant songs, no doubt -- but recitals nonetheless. Whereas not even ten years ago, on the Oblivion tour was brimming with inspiration, unpredictability and sonic bliss. I just don't get what the appeal is of this style of performance to the band or to the audience.

That said, the crowd loved it and the guys seemed overjoyed, so maybe I'm just not keeping up with whatever's happening.