Disquiet

Underworld have come out from under. Today the duo, which brought conceptual restraint and a refined design sensibility to techno (or perhaps it’s vice-versa?) on such fine recordings as Beaucoup Fish and Dubnobasswithmyheadman, surfaced with a new retail download, “Lovely Broken Thing,” available from their website, underworldlive.com. The track comes packaged, in the virtual sense, with an HTML gallery of some 177 photographs, plus a PDF file that serves as the cover artwork. The track is seven new songs sewn together, on one of which, “Peggy Sussed,” Karl Hyde’s rant sounds like nothing so much as an electronicized outtake by John Lennon circa Shaved Fish. (Another track title, “Lenny Penne,” also brings the Beatles to mind, even if the music — a hard, remote, locomotive beat — doesn’t.) Membership having its privileges, one needn’t make a purchase to hear new Underworld. Though “Lovely Broken Thing” costs five quid, once you register (for free) at the band’s site, you have access to free video and audio downloads, including live MP3s recorded this year in Spain and Bulgaria. For now you can get just two chunks of each of those performances, though the band promises the complete sets in the neat future.

By Marc Weidenbaum