Underworld: music with a message
Photo Caption: Baz Allen, Alfie Thomas, Karl Hyde, Bryn Burrows and Rick Smith (from left)
Scene - Entertainment Weekly | Vol. 19, no. 27 | July 7-13, 1988
by John Soeder
"Times were really, really desperate,” recalls Alfie Thomas. "The band, Freur, was on its knees. We needed money to carry on working. We’d already sold our speakers and everything that could be sold. While I was out looking for jobs one day, I came across this offer at the hospital. It said, ‘GUINEA PIGS WANTED — Will Pay 200 Pounds For A Week’s Work.’ I made some inquiries and found out it was for a research laboratory. These drug companies first do research on animals, then they test their product on humans to see if it’s safe. I was one of those guinea pigs.
"It’s not something I’m proud of,” he hastens to add. "I’m totally against all that now — I’m against all animal experimentation. But I did it, and that's what I’m going to get blackmailed with in the future. Madonna has done her nude photo spread, and I’ve done my guinea pig experiment.”
Thomas currently limits his experimentation to the recording studio, with his guitar — not his body — as the subject. His guinea pig days are behind him now. Freur is history, and his new group, Underworld, is looking to make some.
So far, Underworld's prospects are promising. The 18-month-old quintet from Wales is the brand new brag at Sire Records. Their debut album, UNDERNEATH THE RADAR, has left a memorable dent in the jaded psyches of many music critics. And their current U.S. tour, which wraps up in Cleveland this Monday, July 11, with a free, all-ages show at Peabody’s Down Under, is going remarkably well.
"It’s just been superb,” says Thomas. "We’ve been playing small to middlesized venues. It’s been really cozy. The audience gets right up close to us. They're mouthing all the lyrics at me and advising me if I forget to scream at the right point."
The screams are incidental. anyway. Thomas makes his boldest and most authoritative statements with his mutant six-string. Lead vocals are handled by Karl Hyde, who also plays guitar. Rick Smith’s capable keyboards fill in all the in-between over the solid grooves laid down by bassist Baz Allen and drummer Bryn Burrows. The end result for Underworld is a fresh, modern sound that throws Thomas for a loop when he’s asked to describe it.
"I suppose it’s a kind of rock music, it’s a kind of soul music, and it’s a... um...it’s a kind of...wow, WOW...a kind of funkysoul-rock band sound. In a broad sense, we are in a rock category, but I’d like to think that we’re a combination of different styles.” The ten tracks on UNDERNEATH THE RADAR justify Thomas’ reluctant attempts to pigeonhole Underworld’s music. The album’s tight and catchy songs range from the Squeeze-ish power pop of "Bright White Flame" and "Show Some Emotion" to the synthesized etherealness of '' Miracle Party" and "Pray." The title track is a compelling dance cut that opens with Smith tapping out one of Underworld’s adopted political bon mots in Morse code: "Think global, act local."
According to Thomas, the band feels a responsibility to address critical issues in its music. "We’re not out-and-out conservationists or ecologists,” he emphasizes. "But at the same time, we feel the need to say something about all the disappearing rain forests, about the ozone layer, about the terrible injustice that’s going on around the world. Ecology is being sacrificed for economic reasons. It’s a short-term cop-out.”
Underworld gets its message across on UNDERNEATH THE RADAR with an urgency and immediacy that is a direct result of their no-frills recording process. The entire album was recorded live to tape in just under six weeks with virtually no overdubs. "We really wanted to get the spirit of the band down and preserve all that magic you can only get with live recordings, rather than fake a clinical, jiggerypokery approach with crafty engineering and lots of overdubs." Thomas explains. He credits producer Rupert Mine (The Fixx, Howard Jones) and engineer Stephen Tayler for successfully capturing the band's energy in the studio.
Underworld is built around the enduring friendship between Thomas, Hyde and Smith. The three musicians met while attending college in Cardiff, Wales, in the late '70s. Their first outfit, Screen Gems, rehearsed in a freezing grain bin on a Cardiff dock and won a respectable hometown following. The second incarnation of the trio, Freur, made substantial waves in Europe and released two albums, DOOT DOOT and GET US OUT OF HERE. The title track from DOOT DOOT was a major European hit in 1983 and went on to become the theme song for Tahiti’s national radio station.
Once Freur had run its course, the threesome submitted themselves to a month of self-imposed exile, purposely avoiding each other in order to individually form ideas for their next musical venture. At the end of this hiatus, Thomas, Hyde and Smith re-auditioned each other and found that they wanted to work together again. They recruited longtime collaborators Allen and Burrows for their rhythm section, and Underworld was born amidst the same Welsh musical clime that produced The Alarm and Gene Loves Jezebel.
"You build up trust and you build up a kind of mutual admiration for each other,” Thomas explains in regard to the longevity of his collaboration with Smith and Hyde. ”I rely on them and I lean on them to bring me out of myself. They're my best friends, and whatever we wind up doing, we’ll be together for a long time.”
Clevelanders won 't have a hard time picking out Thomas when Underworld takes the stage at Peabody’s on July 11. The lead guitarist is bald, and it's not a side effect of his guinea pig period. He shaves his head by choice. 'll was a decision I made last year shortly after recording UNDERNEATH THE RADAR." says Thomas. "I was reading a couple of books about the Bible for a script I was writing. I became really, really upset after reading about all the massacres and Christian persecutions that went on during the Middle Ages. Together with that, I was going through a personal relationship crisis at the time. I was really hurt and cut up. It was my way of saying nuts to all this glamorous, image-conscious society. I shaved my head to prove that I’m not a fashion victim.”
I tell Thomas that former skinhead Peter Gabriel has recommended that everyone shave his or her head at least once. “I think they should,” he eagerly agrees. "I can’t tell you what a great feeling it is — you don’t have to worry about the wind messing it up or having to comb it every second. It’s really enlightening.”
Looking for a little enlightenment, Underworld style? See your barber, or see you at Peabody’s Monday night.
