RELEASED ON 25.10.2024 ON SMITH HYDE PRODUCTIONS VIA UTOPIA
CATALOGUE NUMBER UWR00098CD
Underworld announce their eleventh album, ‘StrawberryHotel’, released via Virgin Music Group. Here, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lineswhile scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produceghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead,removed from the overheard; words borrowed from theether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimesreappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side toside. Each track a very different room - somesoundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drumand robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer ofmelody and euphoric noise - and each room unmistakably,uniquely Underworld. The only advice from Underworld’sRick Smith and Karl Hyde upon entering: “Please don’tshuffle.” ‘Strawberry Hotel’ features the singles ‘and the colour red’and ‘denver luna’, as well as ‘Black Poppies’, a celestiallove song, a hymn to the universe and to boundless,positive change. Ambient and beatless, ‘Black Poppies’ isa celebration of full dancefloors and the beauty of life itself. ‘Strawberry Hotel’, their first since 2019’s epic,experimental ‘Drift’ project, where the band recorded,mixed and released new music every week for a year. Underworld are Rick Smith and Karl Hyde. Their peerlessfirst album - ‘dubnobasswithmyheadman’ - was released touniversal acclaim in 1994. In the thirty years since thatmould-breaking debut, the band have established theirreputation as one of the most groundbreaking andimportant electronic acts of all time, one that constantlypushes creative boundaries, twists genres and refuses tostay still. In those thirty years, their music hassoundtracked approximately 100,000,000 nights out, andthe mornings after. In the past year alone, Underworldhave played live in front of over half a million people allacross the globe.