Underworld are
gods. They really are. Let me share with you their story. The
original guys from Underworld (plus a few other guys) got together in the early
eighties under the name
Freur and
sold out very very quickly. For nearly the whole decade, they toured with
pop bands, like the
Eurythmics, which was fun for awhile, but then became very sour. They had no
artistic freedom, and they were constantly being told things like "Make this shorter so we can make a
music video out of it" or "You can't use
live instruments on a house track", etc etc.
They got really sick of this and in the early nineties disbanded. The core Underworld members Rick Smith and Karl Hyde started a design company called Tomato (www.tomato.co.uk), which to this day has been extremely successful, with such clients as Nike, Adidas, Intel and Volvo, to name a few. Tomato has done books, tv/radio commercials, web sites, music videos and even architecture -- all very well. Eventually, tomato made enough money that Smith and Hyde had enough money to start their own label and build a studio. This is how dubnobasswithmyheadman was born. They had complete artistic freedom now (on their own label), and basically told mtv to go fuck themselves when they asked them to edit their stuff for airplay. Later, DJ Darren Emerson joined, although he left the group amicably earlier this year to get back to djing. They're one of the most important groups in electronic music ever. They've really pushed what people thought was okay to do with electronic music and have made some incredibly original tracks in many different styles.