This evening on a late night drive back to the city, I queued up one of my favorite Underworld albums that I hadn't spun in some time. I wanted to share it with various music communities online but felt an obligatory responsibility to defend the album, as it received a lot of undeserved heat upon its release.
A Hundred Days Off (2002) was Underworld's first full-length LP after the departure of Darren Emerson. Darren was a critical contributor to the trademark sound of Underworld Mk2, which spanned the album trilogy of
Dubnobasswithmyheadman,
Second Toughest in the Infants, and
Beaucoup Fish. This chapter of the band concluded with the release of their live concert DVD,
Everything Everything Live in 2000.
What followed with
A Hundred Days Off and Rick and Karl's subsequent LPs was a markedly more cerebral incarnation of the duo's sound.
AHDO traded in the floor-stomping anthems and
"lager lager lager..." lyricism for more artful explorations of electronic music. Rejected by some of the clubbing community as weak or lifeless, these listeners were too quick to reject the ambient soundscapes, natural percussion, and polyrhythmic intricacies that make
A Hundred Days Off such an enjoyable and enduring record.
Call it what you like - "album-oriented techno", "progressive downtempo", or "music for aging ravers"... just know that the best of the band's recordings lie deep in the grooves beyond the club tracks of the late 1990s. And with
The RiverRun Project, an array of web-only releases, and their music for both stage and screen, Underworld had an incredible wealth of music to offer after the dance floor had cleared at sunup.