White Label Wednesday: Underworld, “Underneath the Radar”
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 by David Medsker
Or, White Label Wednesday, Before They Were Stars Edition
Underworld would like you believe that they were immaculately conceived in 1994 as the spooky techno band that “debuted” with dubnobasswithmyheadman, with no past or, if pressed, a Jason Bourne case of amnesia about their former life. Ah, but we know better, don’t we? Underworld indeed has a past; they were just hoping that they could pull a Ministry and leave it all behind. The incredible thing is, it worked; almost no one remembers Underworld’s days as a synth-pop band.
But we do.
Underworld formed from the ashes of the band Freur, which scored a minor hit with the Kraftwerk-esque “Doot Doot.” When they disbanded, Freur members Karl Hyde and Rick Smith recruited three more dudes and went whole hog for the brass ring, impressing Seymour Stein enough to hire Rupert Hine – he worked with Howard Jones, man, we’re gonna be huge! – to produce 1988’s Underneath the Radar, the band’s first album for Sire. The album, well, seemed really cool at the time. Hell, even the music supervisors of “Miami Vice” liked them enough to drop the title track into a big bar fight scene. The song cracked Australia’s top ten. In the States, however, it scratched and clawed its way to #74.



Indeed, it was downright ballsy of Keane – this might be the first time anyone has ever used ‘Keane’ and ‘ballsy’ in the same sentence, so let’s pause for a second and savor the moment – to open their 2006 album 
However, Nicolette Larson’s version of “Lotta Love,” 30-some years after she recorded it, has forever changed the way I feel about Neil Young and his approach to songwriting.

In 1988, after hitting #1 with the Gary Glitter/”Dr. Who” mash-up “Doctorin’ the Tardis,” Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty – you might remember him from such WLW posts as
My original interest in the soundtrack was due to the title track from David Bowie – reunited with Nile Rodgers, and it feels so good – the instrumental track from the Thompson Twins, and “Disappointed,” the third collaboration between Electronic and Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant. Then I heard “Papua New Guinea,” and tossed the other three songs aside. There was something in the octave-jumping keyboard riff combined with the ethereal vocal (more on that later), minimalist bass line and staccato synth line, that simply mesmerized me. The song was an Indian guy playing a punji, and I was the cobra. That’s a fitting analogy, considering that my then-girlfriend and I got along in the same way a cobra gets along with a mongoose.
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