Dance music is a singles medium, with tracks designed to be mixed into DJ sets and not generally listened to as a discrete body of work. Only a few other electronic dance music acts could even feint at the idea of doing a full-album live show. It’s an uncompromising techno act that still loves guitars and old-fashioned songwriting it scored a stage adaptation of “Frankenstein” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, oversaw the music at the 2012 London Olympics’ opening ceremony and followed it up with several of Hyde’s abstract, improvised collaborations with Brian Eno. It will be reintroducing one of modern techno’s founding documents to a scene still reckoning with Underworld’s influence.įor today’s electronic music fans, reared on a steady drip of sensory-overloaded festivals and mutating subgenres that feel dated as soon as they’re named, Underworld has enjoyed a rare permanence.
When the band brings its “Dubnobasswithmyheadman” tour to the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, it won’t be as a ‘90s nostalgia act on the reunion circuit. On songs like “Dirty Epic,” he chanted lyrics that still felt like missives from the vanguard of digital decadence and isolation: “The light blinds my eyes and I feel dirty / the light blinds my eyes and I feel so shaken in my faith.” While his bandmate and production partner Rick Smith wrangled a bank of laptops and mixing equipment, the 58-year-old Hyde prowled the stage like Mick Jagger if Jagger had just seen a ghost. I never get nervous, but looking down there I did think, ‘Is this crazy?’”
“We’d played this set to our own crowds before, but never at a festival. “Our hotel room overlooked the festival stages, and we were watching it and thought, ‘Wow, how is this going to go down?’” said Hyde, the band’s singer and co-producer.
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