UNDERWORLD:  Coming Soon to  an  iPhone Near You

Talk about times changing. In the mid-1990s, when Underworld’s track “Born Slippy” jumped off the screen in Trainspotting, it took weeks to track down the name of the band and the song. Now, less than 15 years later, you can get that information with the wave of a hand. But that’s not all. Come this Friday night, you can watch Underworld in concert from the best seat in your house, for free, on your iPhone.

The concert, the first of its kind, is one of three prongs in a concerted Underworld assault on the technological literati. In addition to the performance, they are releasing their rich 21-year catalogue on iTunes. And, in this  “there’s an app for that” world, they’re throwing in an iPhone iDrum app that lets you remix 12 of Underworld’s most popular songs, including “Born Slippy” and “Cowgirl.”

It’s an undertaking that has Karl Hyde, Underworld’s lyricist and vocalist, stoked enough to be sitting in London doing phone interviews to America until the wee hours of the night. With the concert looming, it’s the logical place to start.  “We’re very excited because while the main focus will be the people in the room — the actual audience,” he says, “there will be hundreds of thousands of people looking over our shoulders.” Naturally, he can’t wait to see what that feels like.

Although he understands the skepticism surrounding the translation of a live concert to a phone, he’s seen the test results and swears they — and the possibilities this broadcast opens up — are “amazing. Who knows where we’ll take it? This application applies to the publishing of any audio or visual art. So no one really knows what to make of it. A concert, an installation, those are literal interpretations. But this could go anywhere the imagination takes us. It’s the tip of the iceberg, I think.”

And there’s probably no one better to pull it off than Underworld. As Underworld, Hyde and guitarist Rick Smith have had a textbook perfect career that has spanned decades. Effortlessly straddling the line between rock and dance music and the visual arts, they’ve been headlining festivals and releasing successful albums without compromising their artistic integrity — all without sacrificing their basic anonymity.

“That’s it in a nutshell,” he says. ”At least once a year, we sit in some beautiful place and we say to each other, ‘who would have thought when we were in Cardiff, living on baked beans in a miserable room, recording on this little four-track we’d have this career.’ I cherish being able to walk down the street unnoticed at the same time I know we’re supporting families and able to make art the way we want. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way.  [Believe me.] We never forget how lucky we are.”
Along the way, they’ve inspired bands such as Radiohead, who cite Underworld as a major influence, and been inspired by bands like The Grateful Dead. “It might be because we’re British,” he laughs, acknowledging the left field connection. But the Dead, in addition to being often uncredited pioneers of rave culture, were able to create a body of work that didn’t rely on commercial conventions and that used technology inventively.

Born Slippy Live

As such, the Dead work for Hyde as a concept  “Underworld are essentially outsiders. Yes, we  have a connection to pop culture, but we are outside its constraints.” Just like the Dead or, for that matter, Radiohead. “We respect a band like Radiohead,” he says. “We respect anyone who can walk their own path and make a living doing so.”

The iTunes catalogue release works on both those levels . “Most of the music has been available if you looked, but it was scattered and disconnected,” Hyde says. “Now we can release it all [starting with the LPs and moving on to the 12” and mixes]. And [by making it interactive], we get to add another part of the picture of Underworld.”

“The live CDs, the art, the videos are all part of a more interesting picture than it used to be,” he explains. “Before, you spent 18 months to two years on one big thing that you make a big whoo hah over. But now it’s more about the river run concept of creating a continual release of material in different forms, and updating it in ways we couldn’t have imagined.”

“I took 500 photos for the last book, In the Belly of St. Paul, [published in 2003 with a sold-out limited edition 3,000 copy run], for example, and numbered them. We put one photo in each of the first 500 books and had the owners register their copy and put the photo on this grid. While the shots were taken a few yards apart, they have ended up with new lives all over the world, from places like Hong Kong, Detroit and Minnesota.

“And that expands the idea of a book — it gives it a life that goes beyond the single copy and makes it into something bigger. It works the same with music. Instead of putting out this 12-song album and stopping there, you can add 30 tracks, films, and extend the experience in20ways that are very exciting.“

The release couldn’t come at a better time, because hard evidence, including sellout crowds at massive raves coast to coast, suggests that electronic music has finally broken through in America. It was first expected to blow up here in the mid-1990s. “When Kurt killed himself and there was this huge hole in grunge, and a lot of people thought they could charge in. But we never bought into that, and didn’t try to be a part of that wave,” Hyde says.

Despite chart successes from bands like Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers,  electronic music stayed underground, just as he thought it would. But it never stopped growing. Finally, around two years ago, that growth seemed to hit critical mass, taking it to arenas and venues that would have seemed impossible before.

For Hyde, that moment of realization came in September, 2007, when he discovered Underworld had sold out the Hollywood Bowl. ““You have to understand,” he continues, “that when I was 11 or 12, I got a Fender catalogue and there was this amazing hand-tinted photograph of the Hollywood Bowl and I remember thinking about how incredible it would be to play there. So to be there, knowing it would be full, was unbelievable. ’Hang on,’ I told Rick. ‘Something’s happening here.’

“What you don’t know until you get there is that you can’t see the audience, which is stacked up for miles,” he says. “You rarely see the audience from the stage anyway, but you get used to sound coming from the back. So we weren’t prepared when we got on stage and there was this great roar that seemed to come from the sky.”

This Friday, though, the roar is going to come not from Los Angeles, but straight outta Oakland. If you’re going to the Fox Theater, he recommends not getting too close to the stage, so you can see everything. If not, all you have to do is charge that iPhone  and click your way into history.

Underworld takes the stage at 9 P.M. PST. To listen on the iPhone,  you need the new 3.0 software. Although it will run on 3G, a WiFi connection is recommended. For those without an iPhone or iPod Touch,  tune in via any broadband connected Mac or PC running  Quicktime. For more info and updates, click on www.underworldlive.com.