Emerson Exits Underworld
Caption: "What? They used to be in Freur? Did electro-funk' and toured with the Eurythmics? Let me outta here!"Muzik Magazine | No. 61 | June 2000
DARREN EMERSON TALKS TO MUZIK ABOUT HIS DECISION TO LEAVE THE DANCE SUPERGROUP
INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED DJ Darren Emerson has left the seminal dance act Underworld to concentrate on a solo DJ career. Speaking to Muzik just hours after the move had been made official. He explained “Looking back over the last 10 years, it’s been brilliant. It’s been fantastic and we’ve always had a good time, but when I got back from touring last year, it had just got to the stage where I’ve had enough.”
Emerson – who’s forthcoming Uruguay mix CD for Global Underground is Muzik’s compilation of the month– was making a name for himself as a DJ in the burgeoning London scene before being approached by Rick Smith and Karl Hyde to join Underworld in the late stages of 1990s.
They rapidly establish a reputation as one of the finest live acts in dance music and their albums ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’, ‘Second Toughest in the Infants” and “Beaucoup Fish’, were all huge critical and commercial successes. Their signature track ‘Born Slippy’ from the film Trainspotting reached number two in the charts in 1996 and was the biggest club anthem of the year.
Meanwhile, Darren’s DJ career was inevitably sidelined by the relentless touring schedule – though he has still somehow managed to find the time to develop his own unique and distinctive style, something that his forthcoming, global underground CD demonstrates and no uncertain terms. “I’m not the sort of person who puts compilations out every week, but the Global Underground lads, have always been on my case to do one,” he says. “It seemed like the right time to do it.”
Anyone hoping for stories of heated arguments or dark recriminations will be disappointed. “I’m not bitter at all,” claims Emerson. “I was starting to feel down and just getting a bit bored. Sometimes you come to a crossroads in life, and you have to decide which way you really want to go.“ And although many may see the amount of favourable attention that his global Underground Mix has generated as a reason, Muzik can reveal that Emerson, in fact, effectively left the band as long ago as Christmas “I haven’t been able to tell anyone about it because everything was being finalized with the lawyers,” he admits. “Word got out – I had everyone in Miami asking about it, I’ve been doing interviews for Global Underground and everyone’s been asking me about it so it’s time to come clean.”
For the restless Emerson, the pressures of the album/promotion/touring treadmill simply became too much; “I am just gonna chill out and have a good time,” he grins. “I’ve been working in the studio with a few mates – I was in there with Sasha yesterday hammering some stuff out. There’s all these people who have always been saying ‘we should make a track’ – now I can!”
The other crucial factor, of course, was the birth of daughter Robyn at the beginning of September. “It’s definitely changed my life,“ he says. “I got to a point with underworld where it wasn’t exciting me, so I didn’t want to be travelling around America on tour with a newborn kid at home.” “I am still gonna be DJing two or three times a week and travelling around a lot,” he adds. “I’ll be going out to Ibiza in a few weeks.”
So what now for Underworld? Well, they’ve already confirmed a series of festival dates for the summer to accompany the forthcoming live album. “I’ve heard they’re going to be doing it just the two of them. But there’s all these pictures of me playing at the festival – I’ve even had promoters phoning me up, asking me to DJ after the gigs! That’s why this announcement has to be made, I do wish them all the best of luck.”
Darren, meanwhile, is simply taking it easy – “getting back to my roots,“ as he puts it, which means a bit of remixing (He’s doing Slam’s ‘ positive education’ at the moment), developing his Underwater label, and doing what he enjoys the most – DJing. So, what’s going to be his most enduring memory of the past 10 years?
“Playing to all those thousands of people,” he says without hesitation. “The touring was tiring, but getting on stage was amazing. When I look back at some of the gigs we’ve done – Glastonbury, all these mad festivals all around the world and think about all these people jumping up and down, it was great.”
