After Dinner Speakers: Underworld, Nicky Campbell, Barry Humphries

School's out. Underworld are back and ready to play. Time to down rulers and dump the rules about how to create, consume and categorize dance music. The beautifully blurred clarity of the Underworld playworld; germinated, perfected, dissected, stretched and re-pollinated over their ten-year reign as The Planet's Most Inventive Producers Of Free Electronics; is once again open for visitors. Three years on from their last studio album, and two years after the release of their award winning DVD (‘Everything, Everything’), the fourth Underworld album arrives in 2002 bearing the title A Hundred Days Off. It glows healthily with evidence that after ten years of summoning up the highest quality dance rooted music around, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith can still do it with dignity - and crucially, after the departure of long serving DJ colleague Darren Emerson, they can still clean up on the dancefloor. Smith/Hyde Productions went on a drift dive for A Hundred Days Off. Deliberately freeing themselves to make whatever kind of music their muse dictated, they floated into uncharted waters and then, paradoxically found a way to re-connect with their core virtues. Recognizably Underworld, it's also a more sensual version. The great locked-in grooves shift and dissolve, giving way to looped blues and installation-music calm. Techno kinetics fuse with carnival percussion. Soulful, sexy and supple, they have again created a soundscape for the times. This sounds a like a record made by people who feel alright with themselves, sounding less ‘under’, and more ‘world’. A Hundred Days Off is a form of re-birth for singer/producer Hyde and producer/producer Smith, both in terms of music and attitude. Enjoyment has been prioritized. Feeling good has been sanctioned. Such was the momentum created by their singular ability to tap into the energies of turn-of the decade 80’s acid house, that they somewhat hurtled through the last 10 years or so. From a DIY starter single in 1990, via the poignant, groundbreaking and frankly, stunning debut techno/guitar album Dubnobasswithmyheadman in ‘93, they swiftly ascended to 'generation soundtracker' status, aided by the million-selling 1996 Trainspotting-featured, accidental hit 'Born Slippy (Nuxx)'. Of all the rave spawned supergroups of the 90s, Underworld turned into the most elegant live phenomenon. They became the touchstone of 'high-end electronica', pushing for a better quality delirium, with Karl as frontman; the finest embodiment of earthly soul as vessel outside of a gospel church. Live shows were definitive; Karl the ‘cipherboy/neurobyteman’ transported by a flux of power; and Emerson and Smith jamming and coaxing the music so it planed like Moroder in a bobsled. Underworld's music as we knew it across ensuing albums, was also uniquely human for a supposed techno band. They got into the cracks of moods that dance music rolled over. They were never simply futuristic and gleaming. You could hear the city whisper in their songs. Its lonesome KFCs and deserted Tube stations. There were teeth strewn about in Karl Hyde’s memory trigger, moment-trawling word-bites. This was dance music that allowed you to ‘have it’, or chill, depending on the tune, but also let your mind romp. No other band, let alone ‘dance band’, were so beautifully opaque. As God mixed the last decade into the new millennium, Underworld finished off the touring that had run on from their third album, the Mercury Prize nominated, foxy and contemplative Beaucoup Fish. The final show was in Tokyo in November 2000. Along the way Darren Emerson decided to make a commitment to his own music and DJing career. For the first time ever, Rick and Karl were playing as a duo, and despite early nerves, found at their London Astoria two-piece debut, that their live strengths were undiminished and their fans were just as ardent. A new equilibrium was established as they settled back into the studio in their home territory of Romford, Essex to finish work on the book-ending Underworld DVD and live album Everything, Everything, and to plan for recording. The next phase of Underworld was underway.