Teatime Dub Encounters Underworld & Iggy Pop

• 1 Bells & Circles 07:33
• 2 Trapped 07:46
• 3 I’ll See Big 04:45
• 4 Get Your Shirt 07:32
• Total Runtime 27:36

Info for Teatime Dub Encounters

While overseeing the soundtrack for T2 Trainspotting, Underworld’s Rick Smith arranged a meeting with Iggy Pop in a room at The Savoy Hotel on London’s Strand to discuss working on collaborative music for the film. Their respective tracks Lust for Life and Born Slippy (Nuxx) had perfectly bookended the first Trainspotting film two decades previously. On arrival, Iggy found a fully working studio set up and eagerness to get cracking.

Says Rick Smith “Iggy was staying at The Savoy and graciously said ‘yeah you know we we can meet and talk about something’ because we both felt a strong connection to Trainspotting and to Danny. I turned up thinking I’ve got one chance here to convince this gentleman that we should work together. So I turned up with basically half my studio, hired a hotel room, set up and sat waiting.”

Says Iggy Pop “When you are confronted with somebody who has a whole bloody studio there in the hotel room, a Skyped director who has won the Oscar recently and a fucking microphone in front of you and 30 finished pieces of very polished music, you don’t want to be the wimp that goes ‘uh uhhh’, so my mind was racing.”

Teatime Dub Encounters is the result of a few clandestine hotel room recording sessions, that began a few weeks after Underworld and Iggy Pop had each released their last albums (Barbara Barbara, we face a shining future and Post Pop Depression respectively) on the same day (18 March 2016). It is neither historical or a tribute to past work, it is the work of artists in motion, engaged in a process that they both bring to all of their work – one that uses spontaneity as a spur for creativity.

Underworld and Iggy Pop

Underworld
became one of the most crucial electronic acts of the 1990s via an intriguing synthesis of old and new. The trio's two-man frontline, vocalist Karl Hyde and keyboard player Rick Smith, had been recording together since the early-'80s new wave explosion; after two unsuccessful albums released as Underworld during the late '80s, the pair finally hit it big after recruiting Darren Emerson, a young DJ hipped to the sound of techno and trance. Traditional pop song forms were jettisoned in favor of Hyde's heavily treated vocals, barely there whispering, and surreal wordplay, stretched out over the urban breakbeat trance ripped out by Emerson and company while Hyde's cascade of guitar-shard effects provided a bluesy foil to the stark music. All in all, the decision to go pop was hardly a concession to the mainstream. The first Underworld album by the trio, Dubnobasswithmyheadman, appeared in late 1993 to a flurry of critical acclaim; the trio then gained U.S. distribution for the album with TVT. Second Toughest in the Infants, the group's sophomore LP, updated its sound slightly and received more praise than the debut. Unlike the first, the LP also sold well, thanks in part to the non-album single "Born Slippy," featured on the soundtrack to the seminal film Trainspotting.

The roots of Underworld go back to the dawn of the 1980s, when Hyde and Smith formed a new wave band called Freur. The group released Doot-Doot in 1983 and Get Us Out of Here two years later, but subsequently disintegrated. Hyde worked on guitar sessions for Debbie Harry and Prince, then reunited with Smith in 1988 to form an industrial-funk band called Underworld. The pair earned an American contract with Sire and released its debut album, Underneath the Radar, in 1988. Change the Weather followed one year later, even though little attention had been paid to the first. By the end of the decade, Underworld had disappeared as well.

As they had several years earlier, Hyde and Smith shed their skin yet again, recruiting hotshot DJ Darren Emerson and renaming themselves Lemon Interrupt. In 1992, the trio debuted with two singles, "Dirty"/"Minneapolis" and "Bigmouth"/"Eclipse," both released on Junior Boys Own Records. After they reverted back to Underworld, 1993's "Rez" and "MMM...Skyscraper I Love You" caused a minor sensation in the dance community. Instead of adding small elements of techno to a basically pop or rock formula (as many bands had attempted with varying success), Underworld treated techno as the dominant force. Their debut album, Dubnobasswithmyheadman, was praised by many critics upon release later in 1993 and crossed over to the British pop charts. Hyde, Smith, and Emerson impressed many at their concert dates as well; the trio apparently relished playing live, touring Great Britain twice plus Japan, Europe, and the annual summer festival circuit, where their Glastonbury appearance became the stuff of legend.

Dubnobasswithmyheadman was released in the U.S. in 1995 after being licensed to TVT Records. During the rest of the year, Underworld were relatively quiet, releasing only the single "Born Slippy." Finally, Second Toughest in the Infants appeared in early 1996 to much critical praise. The trio gained no small amount of commercial success later in the year when "Born Slippy" was featured on the soundtrack to Trainspotting, the controversial Scottish film that earned praise from critics all over the globe. Underworld also remained busy with Tomato — their own graphic design company responsible for commercials from such high-profile clients as Nike, Sony, Adidas, and Pepsi — and remixing work for Depeche Mode, Björk, St. Etienne, Sven Väth, Simply Red, and Leftfield. Emerson continued to DJ on a regular basis, releasing mix albums for Mixmag! and Deconstruction. Though Underworld's 1999 LP, Beaucoup Fish, was initially a critical and commercial disappointment, the band continued to tour the world. The live album Everything, Everything followed in 2000, after which Emerson left to continue his DJ career. A Hundred Days Off, Underworld's first LP as a duo since 1989, was released in mid-2002. One year later, the stopgap compilation 1992-2002 appeared.

By 2005, the duo had officially been joined by one of Britain's most respected DJs, Darren Price (although he contributed to A Hundred Days Off), and his work also appeared on a series of online-only EPs Underworld released during 2005 and 2006. They also recorded new material for the soundtrack of the Anthony Minghella film Breaking and Entering. Their first "proper" full-length since 2002, Oblivion with Bells, appeared in 2007. It was followed in 2010 by Barking, an album that featured numerous guest producers including Paul van Dyk, Appleblim, and High Contrast.

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