One record at a time: 427. Underworld - Beaucoup Fish

Electronic music was on life support in the nineties and by the end of the decade I had become pretty disillusioned with contemporary music. Whilst I did occasionally take a chance on an emerging artist such as Basement Jaxx (singles were good, but not much else to interest me) or Fatboy Slim (never liked him as much as I thought I should), I largely took refuge in the back catalogue of my favourite artists. 

Therefore I must have been in a particularly brave or determined frame of mind when I walked into HMV one day in 1999 and bought "Beaucoup Fish" by Underworld on compact disc. I would never claim to be a massive Underworld fan, and the only other record of theirs that I owned at the time was the CD single of "Born Slippy .NUXX", so I can't really explain why I chose to buy their latest album.  

Whilst I was initially unimpressed by what I heard, the music did begin to grow on me and after repeated listening I grew to admire the album. Over the years I have continued to dip into Underworld's music with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but I couldn't resist buying this double vinyl reissue when it was released in 2017. 

"Cups" opens with sampled strings that soon give way to a square wave techno bass and Rick's vocoder treated vocals. The lyrics are suitably incomprehensible and despite ticking along at 130 beats per minute, there's a really laid back air to this song. After about eight minutes the track makes an abrupt turn and suddenly incorporates a breakbeat and an aggressive synth riff that segues into the more frenzied "Push Upstairs".

By far my favourite track on the album is "Jumbo" that opens the b-side. Whilst the lyrics offer Carl Smith's usual mix of the meaningful and the bizarre, it is the music on this song that sets it apart for me. The pulsating "King of Snake" seems to warrant a writing credit for Giorgio Moroder as it references "I Feel Love", but the similarity is only fleeting to my ears. I also like the relentless head banging of "Bruce Lee" and "Kittens" sounds like it was created to induce a dance floor frenzy.

Most of the other songs on this album are downtempo or more ambient efforts that miss the mark. "Winjer" and "Skym" are pretty boring and the repetitive "Push Downstairs" doesn't succeed at all. Happily the album finishes with a song called "Moaner" which is from the same stable as "Kittens" and thunders along with an amazing bassline and frenetic beat. 3/5