Underworld Spectacularly Launches New Carriageworks Series ‘The Works’
Image: Blake Houghton
The broad cultural impact of Underworld – the nearly forty-year-old project of vocalist Karl Hyde and composer Rick Smith – could be seen in the range of demographics I squeezed through as I made my way into the sold-out Carriageworks warehouse on Monday, December 29th.
Some fans – with grey hair and smile lines – had clearly loved the act from their inception in 1987, when they had helped bring electronic music out of basements and onto festival stages. Others, like myself and the youth around me, had likely found and fallen in love with their music from its linkage to the 1996 cult film, Trainspotting.
Either way – wherever their love for the act came from – as the murmuring masses filled in and merged together, this Monday was reserved for anything but a quiet night.
Instead, it was reserved for the launch of the inaugural electronic music series, The Works – a string of six weekly warehouse raves set to take over the industrial body of Carriageworks from now until the end of January.
Surrounded by exposed scaffolding, a plethora of bars, chill-out-zones, and food trucks, the cavernous warehouse was set to see names such as I Hate Models, Chris Stussy, Ben Böhmer, and Michael Bibi showcase their internationally recognised brands of music to Sydney electronic enthusiasts. To launch this series of dance, techno, and house, Underworld – who helped revolutionise all three genres – was a perfect choice.
As we waited for the Welsh duo to take the stage, the post-Christmas, pre-New-Years atmosphere that hung over the audience would have made it difficult for Underworld’s performance to be a failure. But few could have properly prepared for its sensational success.
From the moment the bouncing bass and tap-dancing high-hat of ‘Dark & Long (Dark Train)’ rose into the space, the venue became alight with dance. Arms flew into the air, shoulders were mounted, and joyous shrieks were shouted. Favourite song melted into favourite song, and time became dictated only by the rhythm of the duo’s music.
Stretching 10 tracks into the hour-and-a-half set, singable favourites such as ‘Two Months Off’, ‘Cowgirl’ and an exceptional closing rendition of the euphoric ‘Born Slippy (Nuxx)’ were complemented by long improvised stretches of hypnotic techno. We were lulled into repetitive patterns of dance – forgetting where we were until, with a loud punch of bass, blaze of synth, or change of tempo, we were propelled in a different direction.
The stage was often submerged in thick fog – the music omnipresent through the speakers over our heads and the performance left to the lights. Lasers fanned. Projections swirled. And lightning-like strobes cracked into moments of darkness. Then, safe behind his decks Smith would emerge, bent low over his instruments, while around him Hyde swayed, punched the air, hung his arms back, and projected his voice into the microphone to be picked up and sampled into the driving beat.
Despite a closing remark, commenting on Sydney’s ‘wonderful energy,’ there was very little interaction between the audience and the duo – their legend-like mystique preserved until the end.
Shrouded in lights, fog and screams of applause, the two people behind the music were ultimately far from the focus of the night. Instead, their music – nostalgic, yet somehow still so new within the modern electronic landscape – gave us a rhythm to dance to in the days that followed, as we careered toward the new year.
