Underworld

The sound of Underworld cannot be understood without the collaboration between Hyde and Smith. It all began in a Cardiff restaurant, where the two shared tables and, hours after closing, stayed behind testing rhythms with borrowed machines. First came Freur, an electropop group with touches of reggae and synthesizers that sounded like Kraftwerk but with more swagger. They released two albums, Doot-Doot and Get Us out Here, but the band disbanded in 1986. The curious thing is that the name that would later define them —Underworld— came from a 1985 horror film they themselves scored for Freur. Hyde and Smith reunited in 1987, this time with bassist Alfie Thomas and drummer Bryn Burrows, and the result was a rawer sound, with funk guitars and electronic bases that still smelled of the garage.

The late '80s were a period of trial and error. They signed with Sire Records and released Underneath the Radar in 1988, an album that already revealed their obsession with blending the organic with the digital. But the real shift came when they added DJ Darren Emerson in 1990. With him, the trio fully embraced danceable techno and found a balance between live energy and meticulous production. The definitive leap came with dubnobasswithmyheadman in 1994, an album that sounded as if they had plugged a human brain into a machine: layers of distorted bass, fragmented vocals, and rhythms that dragged like waves. Hyde, who had sung in Freur, now used his voice as another instrument, messy and full of nuances.