Next single: Boy Boy Boy (was: whhhhhaaaaA?????????????)

[khouri]

I really, really, really liked "Holding The Moth" when it was "Globe" and had that really cool electro-techno style ending riffs, like the version played at the Sven Vath show. I couldn't wait to hear a studio version, but "Holding The Moth" is probably my biggest disappointment on the new album. Unlike the brilliant, instantly classic "Crocodile" and "Beautiful Burnout," they took a live thing they'd been doing and made it much, much worse.

What they've done to "HTM" on OWB is load it up with extra noises and turn it into a kind of Ring Road II but with even more AHDO-era piano junk at the end. That synth bit I like isn't even there anymore. Yeah, Bruce Lee.

I fear "Bamboo" is to suffer the same fate. The version they spotlighted in a recent UWlive broadcast was a tragedy compared to the gorgeous, dark and building track from the Music Bank download from years ago. That new riff is just unnecessary. When it comes time to release "Bamboo," please, Underworld, "KEEP IT SIMPLE."

[dubman]

it does strike me that this album, as improved as it on the last one, is a bit of a U2 moment for them, so some tracks have this unecessary polish and work on them that could have benefitted from.. less of it.
not going so far as to write off bamboo. i dont know if it needs more, but to make a studio version it needs something a bit.. better. it works fine as a live jam, tho.

but dobropet is excellent.

[negative1]

if anything, this release has made me look at the 'bruce lee'
release as almost brilliant..

i can't stop listening to the micronauts mix of it..
(highlighted on their new 2cd remix retrospective..
here : http://www.darktrain.org/dirty/forum...&postcount=633 )

whats wrong with me?
later
-1

[holden]

Originally Posted by dubman

it does strike me that this album, as improved as it on the last one, is a bit of a U2 moment for them, so some tracks have this unecessary polish and work on them that could have benefitted from.. less of it.

I can't speak to the "u2 moment" you mention, since imho, everything U2 has done since "Zooropa" has been a replay of their past, and a watered down version, at that ("all that you can't leave behind"= snoooozefest. Who's with me?!)
But i think the extra layers and effects on OWB give it more of a live feel than AHDO and anything else in their cannon. I remember reading an interview (in EQ? Keyboard? i forget) around the AHDO era, where KArl mentioned that Rick spent hours moving the percussion a fraction off-beat to make it sound as if performed live. But sadly, the result was a very sterile, mechanical sounding LP. With OWB, they have these little voice snippets that remind you that there are humans behind the beats. And there's a "space" in most of the tracks, raw guitar, a bit of experimentalism that we probably haven't heard since STITI. Maybe using Abbey Road studios and their recent soundtrack work gave them an appreciation for a lil studio ambience that certainly doesn't come through on BF and AHDO.

Holden

p.s to Negative1: yes, Micronauts remix of Bruce Lee is realy good actually. I love how it starts with a noisy mess, goes quiet, and then becomes this stomping electro animal. It actually seems ahead of its times. Fits right in with the minimal techno of 07!

[dubman]

i suppose i was being vague.
i remember reading an interview with bono where they were effectively dismissing a wide swath of their early-ish discography because much of the songs sounded underproduced and unfinished. this was a little bit after "all that you can't leave behind", an album that buried what was already a group dubiously teetering between fashion and experimentation, then just fell completely into outright pap. and it made me think that their worst album came at a time when they were in the ideal position to have all the tools they ever wanted to get the sounds "just so". it was super clean, very deliberate. they wanted to make the type of song that could be structurally perfected more than one that was interesting or maybe just instinctively "right".

so now take OWB. johnny metropolis has a valid point, i think, in comparing globe, which feels very loose and appropriately live, and HTM, which for some reason incorporates some jazzy riffs, piano, and gives it a very different lounge atmosphere. it's good in some ways: a different way of doing the stram-of-lyrics approach, but i have to ask whether it's really necessary. it doesnt make it any more interesting, and simply adding more for the sake of musicality or filling it out is why i made the U2 comment. it doesnt *sound* as if each part were necessary to the whole, but more like musicians being "proper" musicians.
this basically means (again, to me... this is just what i notice and dont mean to say that this exactly is what happening as UW make music) that most images and ideas they go after get watered down not by process, but by the obligations of a *certain* process the music goes through. tracks that are, i guess, supposed to sound big-hearted and booming, like ring road, fall just short of that extra uncouth enthusiasm needed and end up sounding the bad kind of goofy.

this isnt a persistant problem on OWB for me. it's still underworld, and they're still doing great things. faxed invitation is wonderful for what little it has and glam bucket is a gem and a fine example of this perfection taken in the right direction. but there's something ominous creeping in the background. a certain standard for the kind of finish and production that would make tracks like a majority of the riverrun "not fit" for wide release even as most of it is more interesting than a lot of OWB. as nice as "to heal" is, wtf is the point? and why take out the spoken bit sample? the part that brought it a bit further away from routine cinematic baiting? i get the nagging feeling that even the first two tracks could have done a lot more with a lot less; BB especially sounds constrained, despite the unusual lyrical arrangement, in explicitly being driving and "intense" so that it doesnt feel adaptable to different ideas and interpretations.

this is something i've noticed in them since AHDO's release. the kind of visual versatility and sleight of hand shown in videos like push upstairs and jumbo gave way to straight interpretations (and lyrics) in TMO and an especially ill-advised DA3D video (taking the straight nature of the track as "dance" and applying some of the most rote and god-awful imagery for it). so while OWB might not nearly be as boxed in as AHDO in terms of ideas, it's certainly getting further into post-producing it like a group that belives in something being objectively great, and wants that more than making something *actually* different.

[gillenium]

OWB is perfect. You all are WACKED! :P

[pafufta816]

Originally Posted by dubman

it does strike me that this album, as improved as it on the last one, is a bit of a U2 moment for them, so some tracks have this unecessary polish and work on them that could have benefitted from.. less of it.
not going so far as to write off bamboo. i dont know if it needs more, but to make a studio version it needs something a bit.. better. it works fine as a live jam, tho.

but dobropet is excellent.

i think they were ready to do something polished, considering the way they wrote the rivverrun stuff, and the live jams. they have their minimal side, but they were probably tired of doing that thing and wanted to "polish" things for OWB.

i enjoy the album, some songs i don't find quite remarkable, but i think it was something UW really wanted to create.

[Dino3D]

Just found this topic when I ordered finally the CD single. I'm excited to get it.

[Dino3D]

The BBB CD single just arrived to me. It's incerible feel to hold it in my hands!
I'm not a huge fan of the remixes, but overall it's a very thick and good EP like single.