Techno's timeless titans

By FIONA STURGES

We're nearing the end of our interview with Underworld's Karl Hyde and Rick Smith, but there's one question yet to be asked. It's one that's been playing on my mind for the past hour, but I'm too lily-livered to put it. At last, after much beating about the bush, I spit it out.

"Um, don't you think you're getting a little old for all this?"

Silence. Smith shifts in his seat, Hyde stares at the floor. Eventually Smith murmurs: "I don't know. Do you think we are?"

Now I don't know what to say. Just as I'm about to run for the door, they start giggling.

"Of course we do," bellows Hyde. "When we play live, and I'm running up and down the stage like a madman, I do worry that I'm becoming a cartoon rock star who can't tell when he's past it. But then we were deemed too long in the tooth in the 80s. I remember our manager saying to us before we released an album, 'This is your last shot, boys'. And that was in 1986!"

Hyde is 45, although, with his chiselled cheekbones and athletic build, he doesn't look it. At 43, the bespectacled Smith assures me that he's long past living the life of a rock star.

"I don't go clubbing, I'm not largin' it every night. When we come off stage we're trying to relax in preparation for the next show."

We're at their hotel in Dublin before their appearance at Creamfields, during which Smith and Hyde will play tracks from their forthcoming album, A Hundred Days Off.

On first listening, the album may sound like another blast of techno punk in the style of its 1999 predecessor Beaucoup Fish, but further investigation reveals a decidedly soulful streak. In the opening track, Mo Move, a Brazilian beat lurks playfully under the surface, while the electro-tinged first single, Two Months Off, is as close as this band will get to a joyful house track. It's an unusual move for an act that has always submerged itself in dark imagery and discordant grooves. Such cheeriness and serenity is especially surprising given that, since their last album, Underworld have lost their third member, the DJ Darren Emerson.

"It was his decision. We heard from the lawyer in early 2000 and it was a done deal," says Smith. Have you spoken to him since? "No." So that's it? "That's it." Silence. If there was a showdown, the remaining two are keeping it to themselves.

Smith and Hyde have been in and out of bands together since 1980. They met in Cardiff, where Smith was working in a bank and Hyde was an art student. Their first band was the electronic outfit Freur. "We were kind of outrageous looking," remembers Hyde with a sheepish smile. "We loved dressing up. At the time we were surrounded by New Romantics and we'd come out of punk, but we were determined to be different."

In 1982 Smith and Hyde had their first taste of success. Their electronic track Doot-Doot hovered in the middle of the charts in Britain but went straight to No 1 all over Europe - and in New Zealand. It wasn't long, however, before the pair became disillusioned with the industry.

"When a major company signs you as a young band, you're so thrilled to be having more than your dole money you think everything's changed. But actually it hasn't changed at all. When you look at the figures you find you're worse off because now you've got obligations. But it's all so believable. You're told that if you just do this, the money will start rolling in and you'll move on to the next level. When you're that inexperienced it's easy to be hoodwinked," Smith says.

After just two albums Freur were dropped by their label. Hyde and Smith decided to change their name, and in 1985 became the art-funk outfit Underworld (the name came from a Clive Barker book then being made into a film).

The band were soon signed but things never quite took off. By late 1989, at the end of a gruelling tour with the Eurythmics during which Smith broke his leg, they were all but burned out. Smith went home, leaving Hyde to try to earn some cash as a session musician. But no sooner had he hobbled off the plane when he was told they'd been dropped by their record company and management and were £50,000 in debt.

Smith was forced to sell most of his equipment. With what little gadgetry he had left, he set up a tiny studio in his spare room and, rather half-heartedly, continued writing tunes. Hyde got in touch with his sister-in-law, who worked at an employment agency, and got a job at an accountancy firm.

"For a while I loved it," he says. "I'd never had a proper job. There was no responsibility, no fear the money would dry up. You worked hard and got paid at the end of it, and if you worked overtime you got paid for that too. As a musician, it just doesn't work that way. After six months I got called into the boss's office. He said they were pleased with my work and wanted to send me on a management course. I said I'd think about it."

Happily, Hyde resisted the lure of the corporate world and resolved to get back into the studio with Smith. It was then they decided the band might benefit from a change of line-up.

"Until then we had been taking a seven-piece band on tour with us," says Smith. "But my brother-in-law had been going to these warehouse parties where people were just jumping up and down in front of a DJ. I thought, 'Well, that might work'. I asked my brother-in-law if he knew a DJ and he introduced me Darren. He was only 17 then and full of enthusiasm. It was just what we needed."

For 12 months the three of them set about writing music and recording demos. Their big break arrived three years later in the unlikely form of a tampon ad. Tampax paid £5000 for an Eno-esque track Smith had long ago discarded. After that, the work rolled in. They couldn't switch on the TV without being bombarded with their own tunes, Hyde remembers.

In 1993 they released the album Dubnobasswithmyheadman, a landmark fusion of rock and dance music that had the music press salivating. The similarly seismic follow-up Second Toughest in the Infants was equally ecstatically received. Between these two they put out the single Born Slippy (the song was named after a greyhound they saw running at Romford racetrack). In the first month it sold a respectable 25,000. A few months later it appeared on the soundtrack of the film Trainspotting and really began flying off the shelves.

"When people started getting excited about Born Slippy, we thought, 'Don't buy into this'," confides Hyde. "We even fought the re-release of it for a while. I guess we didn't want to become the Born Slippy band."

Even they underestimated the impact the song would have. As Trainspotting cast its spell across the nation, the Born Slippy chorus of "lager, lager, lager" became an anthem for unruly lads across the land.

Later in the evening at Creamfields, it's the song that has the crowd screaming the loudest. But Hyde remains pragmatic about the effect of Born Slippy on the band.

"I guess it gave us the means to carry on doing what we wanted to do," he reflects. "I remember this one cab driver bringing me home after a gig. He's bringing me to my very nice house and saying, 'What went wrong, mate? You could have been the Prodigy.' This was around 1999. I just laughed at him. We're here, we're in our 40s and we're still able to make music. Each record sells a few more than the last one. To be paid well for making good work, that's great. What more can a man want?"

- INDEPENDENT

* A Hundred Days Off is out this week.