Is this illegal? Pink Pantheress ushers Underworld back to the pop charts

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or underneath a massive blancmange painted to look like a rock, you will have heard PinkPantheress’s hit single Illegal. which is currently meandering in the middle reaches of the UK singles chart.

It’s a chirpy garage pop number that has had its opening lines snipped for numerous TikTok lip sync videos, including an especially excruciatingly routine by former Labour leader Ed Miliband. Honestly, you politicians need to stay away from good things.

What brings the track to my attention is its sampling of Underworld’s Dark & Long (Dark Train), nearly 30 years after the track rose to fame on the original Trainspotting soundtrack. Underworld’s plump synth blaps are all over the Pantheress tune, and it works really, really well. 

I’m going to embed the video for the single here, and you had better darn well listen to it. I’m also going to include Nia Archives' hyper junglist remix because Nia Archives is the bees knees and/or wasps elbows and it'll blast the cobwebs from your cup-a-soup.

Further Fats: Mmm Underworld, the world loves you (2012)

Further Fats: Smileys for miles: 10 rave culture classics that you should listen to immediately (2025)

Underworld bring light in at Aviva Studios / Factory International

Thirty years after the release of their classic album Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Underworld very much bassed with our head man with two spectacular shows at the weekend. 

The venue was Aviva Studios at Factory International, a triangle-decked super venue on the banks of the River Irwell in Manchester. With the seating pulled out, its main gig space has all of the warehouse vibes you'd hope for an old rave band.

Not that the audience was old. I was expecting to be surrounded by a creaking crowd of ancient clubbers, throwing our zimmer frames up in the air like we just didn't care. But it was surprisingly youthful: a testament to a band that has retained its relevance through Danny Boyle soundtracks, opening Olympic ceremonies and a bunch of fancy National Theatre gubbins.

Their lengthy discography was laid out in big fat bass spasms, from the early Dubnobass stompers to the Aphexian oversharing of 2019's massive Drift series. For the old stuff, Dirty Epic lived up to its name, and King of Snake was as poisonous as ever. Their new stuff was well represented: denver luna sounded beautiful live, and the Detroit-dappled Fen Violet seemed laser-targeted for a Manchester rave.

Karl Hyde chose to remain static in the first half, before going full Tasmanian Devil in the second section of the show. Every smiling mouth-beam of that guy is the personification of the refrain from Two Months Off: "you bring light in, you bring light in...". Oh and Rick Smith was there too. Poor Rick. Bogged down with controlling all of that electronic gear while his wayward disco brother goes ham left right and centre. I hope Rick comes off stage at the end and has a little boogie to himself, as a treat.

Shout out to my gig buddy Ros, who came to the gig as a fan of their soundtrack work and went away a bona-fide Underworld club veteran. We have now nicknamed ourselves the Strawberry Jam Girls, after an Underworld lyric. Big up to the lone guy in the "Dark Train" top who seemed lost in a special kind of bliss. And doff of the hat to White T-Shirt Guy next to me who was well up for hugs and yippees.

Here are those two sets in full. Yes, two sets. There was an interval, like we were at a Gilbert and Sullivan opera or something. Below that is a video of Two Months Off, which sees Underworld doused in sunshine, and captures perfectly the insane dynamics after the four-minute mark.

Low Burn  |  Nylon Strung  |  Trim  |  Dirty Epic  |  Soniamode (Aditya Game Version)  |  Kittens  |  Mmm... Skyscraper, I Love You  |  Juanita 2022  |  Tin There

Jumbo  |  denver luna  |  S T A R  |  Pearl's Girl  |  Dark & Long (Dark Train)  |  Two Months Off  |  Rez / Cowgirl  |  and the colour red  |  Border Country  |  Fen Violet  |  King of Snake  |  Born Slippy NUXX

Further Fats: Mmm Underworld, the world loves you (2012)

Further Fats: Things I am willing to sell for Underworld (2023)

Things I am willing to sell for Underworld

Underworld are playing in Manchester next year, and I completely failed to get a ticket.

No. You don't understand. I am really, really into Underworld. I've listened to loads of their songs. Like, more than ten of them. I've followed them from before you even grew ears. And I failed to get tickets. Call myself a fan? This is pathetic.

The news of their latest show passed me by. I must have received an email, but it was subsumed into a mire of spam messages and mailing list gunk. I must have been pinged by Facebook, or poked or shanked or whatever Facebook does these days. But the notification would have been lost in an endless scrolling carousel of political memes and nostalgia clickbaits.

So if you are selling a ticket for Underworld's Manchestet show in April 2024, here are ten things I would be willing to trade in return for said ticket:

An arm

A leg

One little finger

That green patch on my shoulder that seems to change shape every day

My shadow

All but three of my regrets

My ability to taste semolina

A greckel, whatever that is

The angry accountant that lives in my loft because I demand to have prime numbers shouted at me every 41 seconds

The value of the ticket

The Underworld gig is at Aviva Studios, Manchester's brand new mega-venue run by Factory International. I went there for Danny Boyle's Free Your Mind, a dance show based on The Matrix and Alan Turing. Which sounds awful, and the second half was ropey, but the first half was mesmerising and full of surprises.

Also I had two interesting encounters at the Danny Boyle show. One: I met a giant rabbit. Two: I met Danny Boyle. I only have a picture of one of these encounters, as you can see in the picture above. I wonder if the rabbit had an Underworld ticket. Hmmm. Should have checked its pockets.

Note to self: Always check rabbit pockets for elusive merch.

Ten amazing albums that influenced my taste in music

My blogging schedule's gone a bit sideways because the Covid-19 lockdown has, like many other people, left me quite out of sorts. My capacity for creativity is pretty limited.

So I'm going to steal something I did on Facebook. And then we'll get back to the best-of-1995 thing.

My brother Grum tagged me in a Facebook challenge to name ten albums that influenced by taste in music. Here's what I posted, edited to make it more interesting than wot I said on Facebook. 

1 – The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld

I remember playing this on my cassette walkmen in my tent on family holidays. So surreal to be in some random Welsh field and to get this amazing, otherworldly collages playing in my young ears.

2 – Transglobal Underground's Dream Of 100 Nations

This strange mix of UK techno and African tribalism and things from other planets. "Watch the skies! Keep looking!" I went to see TGU a couple of years ago and they were phenomenal.

3 – Drum Club's Everything Is Now

The album that truly made me fall in love with the bass drum for bass drum's sake, an appreciation that served me well in many a club. Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump....

4 – Orbital's brown album. 

Here's the one that changed everything for me. My Damascene moment. The album that hardwired techno and all its variants into my brain for life. And look at me now. I'm **twitch** FINE.

5 – The Irresistible Force's Flying High

Mixmaster Morris's hypnotic ambience lifted me into heady clouds of dubby ambience: I haven't quite come down since. The kind of album that lives in my veins. I also liked things with circles on. See also Banco de Gaia.

6 – The Goons' Ying Tong Song

No, really. This is cheating because it's an EP not an album, and it was a family hand-me-down rather than something I bought myself, but it's worth it because THIS IS WHAT MY BRAIN IS LIKE ALL OF THE TIME.

7 – Adamski's Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy

I have to say, this is NOT a good album, despite the presence of Killer and NRG. But Adamski's DIY 'keyboard wizard' approach introduced my little Smash Hits brain to the concept of the bedroom studio a long time before doing that was a viable option.

8 – Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman

An obvious one for other fans of 90s techno, but what a strange animal at the time. I was already a fan of their 12-inches and I keenly devoured Junior Boy's Own's early output. All that gorgeous Tomato design work too. Cor.

9 – LTJ Bukem's Logical Progressions series

Drum 'n' bass was always a trip, and even now the thought of this series gives me tingles. My few short years as a drum 'n' bass DJ were some of my happiest creative times. The best sound, the best live experience, and the best to mix. 

10 – Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Pretty obvious, this one. That bass in Ageispolis. Oooooo.

And so many more, of course. Ten will do for now. 

That's it. I'm creatively spent. I've run out of words. Flong. Pathoot. Clibbibuuuu. See? It's just noise.

I'm off for yet another night of stupidly vivid lockdown dreams.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: B is for Boss Drum (2010)

Further Fats: Don't be rattled: it's just drum 'n' bass (2016)

Ten slices of shallow-fried Twitter whimsy

Twitter is a platform in which everyone can communicate with everyone else all of the time without any downsides whatsoever.

What follows are ten slices of shallow-fried whimsy lovingly copied-and-pasted from my Twitter account. Some if it reads as a useful self-help guide along the lines of The Power Of Now, How To Win Friends And Influence People or the Roland SH-101 Owner's Manual. Some of it reads like poetry along the lines of, er, poems and stuff.

I have given each tweet a header so you can perhaps make an index from it, like they do with proper books.

1. The food puns
Butter Living Through Chemistry. Meusli Has The Right To Children. Thymeless. Dubnobasswithmyheadman (where bass is a fish). Adventures Beyond The Ultrawurst. Endtrojuicing. Not sure where I'm going with this.

2. A question about 1996
Did the boy ever see his mom that weekend to tell her Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan?

3. Thoughts post-Brexit
Don't worry, everyone, we don't need Europe. Just stay in your towns, don't go anywhere, don't meet new people and don't buy anything. We didn't have the EU around the time of the Great Plague and everything was just fine.

4. Morning reflection 1
A grey morning in Manchester. Cold raindrops fall on puddled streets like polar bears in spandex, if polar bears were tiny and made of water, also forget the spandex, that's just a distraction tbh

5. A motivation
How to have a positive day:
- smile more
- do one kind thing
- pay a compliment
- open up the portal of d'ath krondor
- eat healthy
- live in the moment
- the tentacles, the tentacles, they burn
- be a good listener
- the void shall become all, ye wastrels of earth

6. A concern
I'm slightly worried that Antifa is short for Anti Fat Roland.

7. A dream for the future
It's splitting hairs, but I'd like to hear New Order's Mr Disco covered by Electronic.

8. Morning reflection 2
It is morning. The sun comes alive in the eastern sky and says its happy greetings. Hello trees. Hello fields. Hello squirrels. Hello sun! they call and wave. In the western sky, the moon dies a horrible death. Everyone laughs.

9. A simple wish
I wish Squarepusher was called Squidpusher and all of his promo shots were of him in back alleys selling squid.

10. The bird incident
Twitter, I forgot to tell you. A low-flying goose honked at me pretty aggressively the other day, so that's pretty much 2020 written off. How's YOUR week been?

Further Fats: Squarepusher's psychedelic number - could it send him (robert) miles off course? (2009)

Further Fats: Top ten ways to write a top ten music list (2012)

Best electronic albums of 2019: special mentions

Soon, we'll get our teeth into the top 20 best electronic music albums of 2019, like a narwhal savaging an unsuspecting squid. But first let's get some special mentions out of the way.

When I compile my list, I have a set of fuzzy rules in my head. To be included, an album must be in the vein of modern, post-Aphex electronic music, but that leaves things pretty wide open. Nothing too poppy, although the list has pop elements. Don't genre-jump into hip hop, although the list will certainly have elements of this too.

I also try not to include compilations, although watch me break this rule almost immediately with the album I've placed at number 20. This does mean there's no space for Burial's Tunes 2011 to 2019 (Hyperdub) nor for Autechre's Warp Tapes 89-93.

I've also been strict about the definition of an album, so I'm sadly not including the return of Andy Stott on the EP It Should Be Us (Modern Love) nor, controversially, am I including Underworld's spectacular and impressive Drift project because there's so much of it, it would have ground this process to a halt.

And finally, I have a new rule: if I don't like it, I won't mention it. In previous years, I thought it was important to be comprehensive and I included in my longlist albums that I wasn't interested in but were important enough to mention. As if I this site was some kind of electronic music almanac rather than just a daft writer in his underpants mashing a keyboard with his fists. Why recommend something I'm not bothered about?

So from now on, if I'm not keen on it, it doesn't get a mention. Sorry, Tycho. Sorry, DJ Shadow.

Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here (as and when it appears).

Drifting off (a) on my sofa, or (b) to see Underworld – delete as appropriate

Yesterday started off normal. A couple of hours on work emails, paid off a boiler repair, noshed on an overcooked pub fry-up, tootled around erranding a few errands, and finally a bus ride home during which I decided to have a nice night in.

After all, I'm getting on a bit, and I sprained my foot slipping on ice at the weekend, and I was feeling a lot better but definitely needed an evening at home in front of a warm radiator and a nice cold Netflix.

And then I saw this tweet.

Back home in Manchester for Warehouse Project tonight - We got lasers!

Tickets: https://t.co/xe1owL5c76@WHP_Mcr #Manchester #WHP#TONIGHT #UnderworldLIVE pic.twitter.com/ueYQ4gRCU3

— Underworld (@underworldlive) December 5, 2019

What? Underworld in Manchester? Why did my butler not tell me about this? I got off the bus. I bought a ticket on my phone. Three hours later, this happened.

I didn't even know they were playing in Manchester tonight. A nice last-minute surprise.

(Volume warning: loud cheers at end.) pic.twitter.com/13aIho5TCo

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) December 5, 2019

Underworld were phenomenal, with such an infectious energy. How can you not dance when Karl Hyde is gyrating and prancing and flapping and gurning? He's Tyres from Spaced. We all love Tyres from Spaced.

A few days ago, I was laid up with a swollen foot the size of a small Bavarian hamlet. And here I was at the front of an Underworld gig, dancing like an electrocuted narwhal, exchanging hugs and high-fives with absolute strangers.

And what strangers! Hello in particular to the soft-faced woman who was heavily into the Drift series, the pensioner asking for drugs who turned out to be in his 30s, and the Biffy Clyro wannabe who punched his way to the front rail only to have the tallest man in the universe tell him to fudge off loudly until he actually fudged off.

And to think I had planned to spend the evening spilling over the sides of my sofa shoving blocks of lard into my dribbling mouth while skipping through Adam Sandler films looking for the jokes. Fast-forward all you want, Fats, you'll never find them.

Thanks, Underworld, for an unexpected night out. I once blogged in the style of Underworld and compared Underworld to toast. Tonight I became one with them, and I didn't even puke up my overcooked fry-up.

Further Fats: Overheard conversation... (2005)

Further Fats: A low-denominator, low-rent scally by any other name would smell like sweets (2007)

For Delia Derbyshire, faffing became an artform — heck, I should know

The new Electronic Sound magazine features electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, who is the best woman named after an English county after, er, Sarah Lancashire.

This edition comes with a particularly striking cover illustration by Adam Forster. A quick glance at his Instagram suggests he does a great line in hand snails, finger fries and skull worms. You'll have to scroll his Insta to discover I'm not making those things up.

It's a very nice issue with some good words in, and it even has Underworld talking about their Drift project, and Josh Wink talking about Higher State Of Consciousness.

However, some idiot came along to spoil everything. Hey, look, it's not my fault that I happen to know EVERYTHING about Delia Derbyshire and all you flopsies know absolutely nothing about her. Harrumph.

Here's the start of my new column about Delia Derbyshire in Issue 59 of Electronic Sound. I do apologise. By the way, as ever Joel Benjamin has done a brilliant illustration to accompany my writing - see here.

I envy Delia Derbyshire and all the music she magically made from toasters and wooden spoons and fart cushions. When I faff around all day, smearing my belly with guacamole to add texture to my sexts, I’m “procrastinating” and “avoiding my responsibilities” and “behind on my bills”. But for Delia Derbyshire, faffing became an artform: she’d whack some nipple clamps onto a lampshade and suddenly you’ve got Doctor Who. [read more by getting Electronic Sound issue 59] 

I would like to apologise to the entire history of electronic music. pic.twitter.com/HTmMZVtkJy

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) November 14, 2019

Further Fats: Electronic words (2014)

Further Fats: Delia Derbyshire: put a donk on it (2017)

Five things: from Spice Girls to Underworld with a bit of Toy Story inbetween

Here are five things I got up to this week.

1. Got proud

I went to Didsbury Pride, which is a celebration of LGBTQ+ people by Emmanuel church in Manchester, the church I went to for many years back in the olden days. It's a wonderful thing, and when I got there everyone was drinking spirits and dancing to the Spice Girls. I didn't recognise anyone, so I hung around awkwardly for ten minutes and then went home. Ah well. It's still a wonderful thing.

2. Got silly

I co-hosted Bad Language, the monthly spoken word night I run with Joe Daly. I'd missed the July one as I was in Edinburgh, so it was great to be back. And for some reason it was packed. Mid-week after a bank holiday weekend and everyone came out to party. Nutters, the lot of you. I'd been to a funeral earlier in the day, so it was just the tonic to be silly in front of an audience all night.

3. Got confused

This happened in a coffee shop:

Me: What drinks do you have that don't have tea or coffee in?
Barista: You don't drink coffee?
Me: No.
Barista: How about a tea?
Me: I don't drink tea. I'd like an iced drink.
2nd barista walking in: You don't drink coffee or ICE?!

4. Got annoyed

I saw Toy Story 4 and blubbed. I always blub at films. Oh and I started series two of Mindhunter, a grisly serial killer drama where you don't really see the grisly bits. It's such a good programme, although it fell for a well-worn trope. In one scene, like so many other programmes, they dubbed feedback over people talking talk into microphones. This doesn't happen unless sound is being mismanaged or it's an actual soundcheck. Stop doing it, programme makers! *squeeeals*

5. Got listenin'

I've been listening to things. Every other day on my Twitter account, I post a "you should be listening to" recommendation, old or new or somewhere inbetween. I've recently plugged Antwood, D-Shake, Underworld, Daphni and Jamie xx. To hear my nuggets of audio wisdom. follow me on the tweets.

Knob-twiddling and Salad Fingers

Things have been quiet around here because I've been under the weather, literally because of the proximity of the sky, and also metaphorically.

So here is a bit of audio and a lot of a video to keep you entertained.

Underworld have posted a 2005 as-live studio session of Twist, from their A Hundred Days Off album, and it sounds pretty sweet. It's free to download too.



David Firth has plopped all the old Salad Fingers episodes onto YouTube, now including more recent ones. It's as sinister as you remember, and of course the soundtrack is excellent.



I advise looping the two simultaneously and see what happens. In the meantime, I shall try my very best to get well soon.

Teatime Dub Encounters - Underworld and Iggy Pop get shashed on gronk

Iggy Pop and Underworld tried to drum up a track for the Trainspotting sequel T2, but they failed because they were all honked up on skag.

Actually, they weren't, but their new collaboration Teatime Dub Encounters did arise from Trainspotting-inspired studio sessions in a London hotel room.

"Hello, is that room service? Yeah, have you got a spare jack to XLR lead, we've run out. Oh and Ableton Push. Just leave it outside the door."

The result is an EP that doesn't much feel like a continuation of Underworld's previous album Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future.

Instead it feels more the kind of ephemeral collaboration you got in the mid 90s, when Begbie first chucked his pint glass off a balcony. When Iggy Pop or Lou Reed or even flipping Pavarotti turned up in other people's stuff.

In other words, odd, awkward, not cool, but kinda charming.

My favourite on the EP is Trapped. It feels like Johnny Cash trying his hand at disco, if it was mixed by Fluke. Jump over to YouTube for a listen.

I can only hope there'll be more bleepy stars giving ageing singers a chance. Skrillex and Dolly Parton. Orbital and Vera Lynn. Autechre and the Keyboard Cat meme  I know that last one doesn't fit the joke - I just really want to see Autechre perform with Keyboard Cat 

Underworld's smashing video for Push Upstairs

Let's take a moment to appreciate the woozy monotones of the video to Underworld's 1999 top twenty single Push Upstairs.

The video and its disorienting effects, the result of a glitch in the equipment, were produced by Underworld's design arm Tomato. They shot it in the incessant rain of the Blue Mountains outside Sydney.

Below Push Upstairs itself, watch a much overlooked making-of video, which features the stuntman chap jumping through glass in real time. It took three takes.

In March 1999, the band was featured on Top Of The Pops alongside Whitney Houston and B*Witched. As far as I recall, no windows were jumped through.

I Am Dogboy: Underworld's new book already pleases me no end

I Am Dogboy is already my favourite book of 2016.

It has been written by Karl Hyde, the dancey bloke from Underworld, and it contains diaries, pictures and abstract poetics collected since 1999. Those that have seen me perform my weird fiction or seen my text-heavy exhibition Slow Reader will know how much I'm going to love this.

Because the Tomato collective have done the design work, the book is going to look gorgeous. I also like the fact that Hyde has "done a Bill Drummond" and divided a special painting into 100 separate pieces for the deluxe print-run. I once bought 0.05% of a painting off Drummond once. That's another story.

All this lovely new Underworld wonderfulness can be pre-ordered on their website. It's not cheap, but I reckon it'll be worth every penny.

If you fancy a treat for your ears, there's a Spotify playlist building up in preparation for the release. Click below for more. Brills.

I Am Dogboy, the playlist with songs from Karl's new book. Follow for weekly updates @Spotify ♫ https://t.co/AO74ls6vxL

— underworld (@underworldlive) June 30, 2016

Listen: a new Underworld track you may not have heard yet

Here's a new Underworld track that may surprise you. A Japanese edition of Underworld's Barbara Barbara, we face a shining future includes a bonus t-shirt - and this moody track. Here it is on Discogs. Listen to Twenty Three Blue above. I'm adding this to my new #choon list.

The new Underworld album's great, by the way. These guys are 36 years into their musical partnership: amazingly, they still have a lot of bass drum rattling about their heads. For that alone, I'm in awe. The album's middle section's a little soft for my liking, but If Rah gets constant play on the Fat Roland gramophonium.

I'm quite tempted by the collector's pack, full of Tomato goodness.

Harder Better Faster Fats: how I want to make 2014 better than 2013

In the spirit of this site being a bit more personal than Fat Roland On Electronica, I wrote a lengthy blog post about how my life is awful and we should all just live in a dungeon gnawing the plaster off the walls and listening to Lionel Blair read out the contents of his own soul.

Instead of bombarding you with the whole thing, and to inject a little entertainment into it, I am going to split it out over a few weeks. I am also going to make you listen to this:



AN INTRODUCTION.

Underworld's Always Loved A Film makes me feel nostalgia mixed with a tickling, bubbling hope that fizzes from foot to groin to noggin. It's in this spirit that I present this week's 'Harder better faster Fats'. Yes, that's what I'm calling it. Shut up.

So then. By way of an introduction: I feel uneasy about 2013.

Despite brilliant high points such as Fat Roland’s Electric Shorts and the Edinburgh Fringe, it’s left me with an uneasy feeling. I joined an amazing writing group, did some really fun video and Twitter work, and some wonderful luck came my way. But I think I let opportunities slip.

These blog posts will be me working out that slip.

AN ANALOGY.

Take the film trilogy Naked Gun.

I love that those films because I am stupid. It was all so slightly off-the-rails and I love deadpan. But every time I watch it, I feel that I could be watching Airplane!, which is even better.

Maybe that's what 2013 was like: Naked Gun when you could have been enjoying Airplane! If you're not familiar with that analogy, replace those film titles respectively with Bradley Walsh and Bradley Cooper, or the current series of Sherlock with any other series of Sherlock.

A PROMISE.

I feel optimistic about 2014. I've made myself some promises. Little targets throughout the year to make the next 12 months more, well, less slippy.

They will involve my writing and my focus and my health and some pretty deep crap. As I blog about it over the next few weeks, I'll accompany it with some of the most hopeful records I can find.

(If this all sounds dangerously like therapy-through-blogging, then welcome to Netloafer...)

If 2014 turns out as well as I hope, I'll be dancing around my hovel to the pulsating glory of Always Loved A Film whilst mentally crash-landing a plane with a blow-up doll, far far away from the wall-gnawing Lionel Blair dungeon.

Now, that's hope...

(Pictured: Underworld.)

Best electronica albums of 2012: numbers 10 to 8

It's time for my annual rake through the detritus of the last 12 months: my top ten list of the best electronic music albums of 2012.

I don't know if it's the seventeen recessions we've been through, but this year's list feels quite different from the previous ones. Instead of the summer-tinged likes of Mount Kimbie or the chirpiness of Plaid, these selections seem more dour. A bit miserable. So something to look forward to, then.

Still, this represents what I am convinced is the best of the best. Let's start with some runners that didn't quite make it to the final fence.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 7-5; numbers 4-2; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Some also-rans

Four Tet sellotaped together some 12-inch singles to produce an album called Pink (Text), but it was too much like Mr Tet in workman mode for my liking. Despite the appearance of the godlike Jamie Lidell, and brilliant though it was, Simian Mobile Disco's Unpatterns (Witchita Recordings) didn't make it to the final list.

The psychedelic experimentalism of Juju & Jordash's Techno Primitivism (Dekmantel) was quite something to behold. Two acts turned my head this year but didn't produce albums. Still, it's worth checking out oOoOO's heroin-tinged beats on Our Loving Is Hurting Us (Tri Angle) and do grab the massively important collaboration of Hudson Mohawke and Lunice in the shape of the eponymous TNGHT (Warp x LuckyMe) EP.

The oldies were still at it. Underworld refreshed an old compilation to release the 1992-2012 Anthology (Underworldlive.com), which by default was full of brilliance, while less successful
was DJ Food's first album in over a decade: The Search Engine (Ninja Tune) was swamped with guest vocals and not much else.

10 - Ital - Hive Mind (Planet Mu)

Here we have a Thrill Jockey lad (watch Mi Ami’s Dolphins: yeah, that’s him in the gloves) who has left indie-crossover to inhabit a crystalline landscape of mid-paced house grooves and perfectly-pitched ambience that should, on first listen, pitch-bend its quirky way into your brainhole and stay there for some time.

Ignore the Whitney Houston sample – that’s entertaining enough – but instead listen in awe at Hive Mind (Planet Mu)'s Israel where warm washes shoot into curious new territory at the two-thirds mark, or the moody stomp of Floridian Void that gives in to heart-breaking synth washes, or the disorientating brokenness of Privacy Settings.

There are only five tracks – three of them are ten minutes long – so if you don’t want the opening phrase of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way over Footwork-ish wrong-key disco edited in some pretty basic software (Audacity, I believe), then maybe you should peruse the rest of this top ten instead. But for me, this was Planet Mu’s shining moment of 2012.

9 - Silent Servant - Negative Fascination (Hospital Productions)

“Stasis is death. See you on the other side.” These were the final words of industrial techno label Sandwell District at the start of this year. For one of their artists, the other side happened to include a mesmerising album called Negative Fascination (Hospital Productions), produced amid economic flux as Hospital found themselves closing their lovely blood-red record shop in Manhattan.

Silent Servant offers desolate dark techno with leanings towards post-punk minimalism. It could be just another Basic Channel-soundalike, but in this world there is enchanting magic: the beautiful persistence of Temptation & Desire, the deep suspended disco of Utopian Disaster (End) and the metallic clunk (no, it’s better than it sounds, honest) of Invocation Of Lust. This servant is lonely but alluring.

Even the unforgiving android barks of The Strange Attractor, which would leave most diving for cover, offer a strange allure that gives these gaunt, DIY rhythms the space and depth to let the imagination wander. Rarely in 2012 has an album given me so little on first listen then slowly hooked its rusty claws under my skin.

8 - Monolake - Ghosts (Imbalance)

If the rasping snares of the opening title track haven’t ripped off your leg before the two minute mark of Monolake’s seventh album Ghosts (Imbalance), and the whispering industrial voices haven't sucked your weak heart from your chest, then you’ll probably survive the rest of this cold, cold, cold album.

The creaks and drips of Taku feels like you’re tiptoeing through an underground cave only to realise you’re inside a stomach, while the clinking Unstable Matter is pure horror film soundtrack. The slamming urgency of Foreign Object, cloaked as the sound of a distant choir trying to pickaxe their way out of a landslide, is so full of industrial swag, it would be best to take up the foetal position until the memory subsides.

Monolake debuts in one of my top tens because this time there is more of a solid rhythmic structure, and although it’s all rather disembodied, it gives me more to hook onto than other ‘lake offerings. A good starter for new Monolake listeners, perhaps. Insert journalistic ‘I believe in Ghosts’ ending here.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 7-5; numbers 4-2; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Further Fats: Best electronica albums of 2009.

Mmm Underworld, the world loves you

The Olympic opening ceremony bandwagon has not only bolted, it has sprouted jet engines and shot off to the dark side of the moon. But I have to talk about it for one reason and one reason alone. 

Lemon Interupt.

This was a little-known house music act that shared a label with Terry Farley and Ashley Beedle in the early 1990s. The playful repeating harmonica on Big Mouth was a style later appropriated by the likes of The Grid and, yeesh, the Rednex.

More importantly, they were better known as Underworld, whose music lent so much energy to the rising chimneys and flaming flutes of Friday night's telly.

Underworld expressed the 90's fractured postmodernism better than Zoo TV or grunge, with Edward Lear-style blethering spilling out of their music and, through Tomato, their design aesthetic.

Their third album dubnobasswithmyheadman gave us the bold epics Mmm Skyscraper I Love You, with its visions of Elvis, fat Jesus and whipped cream, and Dark & Long which you heard in the opening ceremony. Yes, I said third album. Their first two were synth pop efforts for Sire and are for purists only.

By the time they were shouting "lager, lager" - actually not one of their strongest tracks - many dance-heads could claim Underworld as part of their musical DNA. As part of their emotional DNA. We had the MTV-baiting slo-mo of Push Upstairs, their immense anthem Rez, and soundtracks for Anthony Minghella, Danny Boyle and the Royal National Theatre.

Given all this history, when I tuned into BBC iPlayer with "I AM CYNICAL" already written in vinegar on my computer screen, I wasn't quite expecting the Underworld feast that followed. Always Loved A Film, Moon In Water, Dirty Epic, Crocodile... even their immense pieces And I Will Kiss and Caliban's Dream nicked bits from other Underworld tracks. That lead to the flame being lit with a synth line ripped from Two Months Off.

It was unbelievable. Let's say your favourite food is toast, but no-one else knows about toast so it feels like your little secret. You know that by applying heat to bread, it goes brown and crunchy, but you want everyone else just to carry on enjoying their floppy, disappointing room-temperature Tesco's finest loaves. Then after 20 years of loving toast and secretly meeting other people that like toast, the moon has suddenly become a grill and every building on earth has been replaced by a perfectly smoking slice of Hovis. The population is amazed as they dance through the streets with giant butter knives shouting "toast! toast! toast! we like it the most! most! most!". Children skip through fountains of crispy crumbs before scuttling off to dark alleyways to sniff marmalade. Toast is the thing. Uneaten sandwiches spill out of overflowing bins, landfill sites double in height with slices of gravy-soaked bread, and although the white / brown / wholemeal / Mighty White war breaks out in the Middle East, the future is toast. The world is enjoying your little secret.

I agree that the Olympic opening ceremony was a worthless diatribe of propaganda for evil things like the NHS, multiculturalism, pop music, lesbians, industry, sheep and people dancing in top hats. How can we not hate all of those things? But everyone who watched it got a lesson in Underworld. And, for that matter, their collaborator High Contrast.

In 40 years time, one of the surviving members of Underworld, all wrinkles and no reputation, will be dragged on stage at royal jubilees and sports ceremonies to perform out-of-tune versions of fading classics. While the other one narrates Thomas the Tank Engine. Meanwhile, I dedicate this 650th blog post to one of my favourite bands come good. 650 is the rate at which Underworld resonate. It's measured in herts or gammas or--

LEMON INTERUPT.

Oh very funny. We've got the Rednex for the closing ceremony, right?

Further Fats: Chosen Words - U is for Underworld

Bleep Years day five: Underworld's Beautiful Burnout (2007)

Bleep Years is a series in which I stagger through two decades of musical memories, drunk-hugging single tracks that somehow represent entire years of my life. I love these tunes, man. No seriously, I reeeeally love these tunes, hic.

2007: Underworld's Beautiful Burnout

When Born Slippy stole the nation's heart and liver on the Trainspotting soundtrack, I'd already been into Underworld for ages. I didn't even consider it to be their best work. I know that makes me that annoying muso beardo who waffles on about people's *early* work, emphasising "early" as if it's some magical incantation designed for only bourgeois ears, but it's true. I own Underworld's Underneath The Radar on vinyl. Beat that, proles.

I feel I've lived alongside Underworld ever since, from dubnobasswithmyheadman's stark artwork, thrilling to Push Upstairs on MTV, and falling in love with them all over again with the Barking revival and even a David Lynch remix. So why have I, of all the tracks in their 24-year record-releasing career, chosen Beautiful Burnout from their overlooked 2007 album Oblivion With Bells?

I was in a mess at the end of 2006. I burst into tears for no reason, my self-esteem was on the floor and I wanted to hide in the shadows. Around about the time of me writing about ten places I wanted to see Autechre played, the future seemed confusing and scary.

2007 was the year I got things together again. I lost weight, I got a new job and, over time, started becoming the writer I'd always wanted to be. When the "bird, chrome" refrain descends into the frowning techno punches after the five minute mark on Beautiful Burnout, it reminds me of the new hope and energy I built for myself. Underworld have never released a more timely track.

A very small 2011 preview featuring Radio 1, Planet Mu and Frankenstein

This time last year, I posted a colossal preview where I swept up every bit of electronic music I could find and shoved it into a crystal ball blog piece the size of Jupiter.

The problem with that was twofold. Firstly, there was a woeful lack of decent pre-release information, and it's not as if I have 92,000 press officers on speed dial on my phone, and so I ended up filling in the gaps with records that I would never have otherwise mentioned on my blog.

Despite that, I still ended up with endless snippets of data that had to be bashed into the shape of a blog post in such a short timeframe, which gave me my second problem: I couldn't edit or check the veracity of my facts to the standard I would normally try to achieve on this blog.

And so, despite what I may have promised on Twitter, I'm not doing an uber-preview for 2011. You'll have to stay tuned to Fat Roland On Electronica if you want to find out the latest from Surgeon, Battles, Luke Abbott, Joker, Instra:mental, Teeel, Flying Lotus, the bloke from Metronomy and, um, David Lynch.

I'm not entirely heartless, and I will allow you a wee preview. The first is happening on a radio station that I tend to assume all my readers are too mature or cultured for. Thanks to a top five album by dubstep supergroup Magnetic Man, Adegbenga 'Benga' Adejumo (pictured) and Oliver 'Skream' Jones will join the In New DJs We Trust roster. It makes me wonder what happened to Mag-Man's third leg, Artwork, but it makes Radio 1 at 9pm on every second Thursday worth listening to.

Also in January, Planet Mu (or Planet µ if you're being pedantic) will release 14 Tracks From Planet Mu, which will contain four new tracks as well as known favourites from Ikonika (her huge earworm Dckhdbtch), Floating Points and more. If you're wondering how essential this is, think heroin, think oxygen, think Santa hats at office parties. Now think of Santa inhaling heroin fumes using an oxygen tank. Yes, children, Santa's a junkie.

Finally, 2011 will be the year in which James Blake (MySpace genre listed as "dub / grime / melodramatic popular song") will release his debut album, which everyone will laud as genre-busting and experimental. Blake will steal everyone's fire this year, although if you want a truly modern Prometheus, have a look at what Danny Boyle is up to later in 2011.... google for Underworld and Frankenstein.

Top ten best electronica albums of 2010: part three of four

This is part three. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part two and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

4 - Four Tet – There Is Love In You

Kieren Hebdon's strongest album had 2010 skipping to the dancefloor while it was still in short trousers. It is probably the only album in my list that has nudged the top 40, a deserved success after he lit the Burial touchpaper with the Moth / Wolf Cub 12-inch last year. In the modern parlance of today's youth, this album is definitely double-rainbow.

I had been lazy writing off Four Tet as coffee table electronica for people too afraid of Venetian Snares. There Is Love In You is sardine-full of outstanding tracks (the fractured vocals of Angel Echoes, the soaring simplicity of Circling, the thundering energy of Plastic People), but it works best an emotional journey start to finish, especially when topped with heartbreaking Bibio-like finisher She Just Likes To Fight.

A ten-out-of-ten for Four Tet. Buy There Is Love In You from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

3 - Luke Abbott – Holkham Drones

Is it really four years since Luke's stupendous 8-bit single b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b? Holkham Drones is Abbott's first album and appears to be named after a posh place in Norfolk. Even though it appears to be the Border Community label's only album release of 2010, it arrived on the electronica scene with less of a fanfare, more of an enthusiastic trumpet fart (check my own fartings here).

Holkham Drones needs to be rediscovered immediately. Taking its cue from basic frequency modulation, the cymbals hiss and the bass rings hollow and the whole thing appears as if it may fall over any second. But as the beat grabs you by the badgers, your mind is transported into a grey fluffy analogue world belonging to Boards Of Canada and Cluster (the band not the cereal). This meditation on ambience through repetitive beats is the greatest noise since early days of techno, or since I knocked on Timmy Mallett's door for a solid week because he owed me a fiver.

The best Abbott since, um, Diane Abbott. Buy Holkham Drones from Bleep or Boomkat.

2 - Gonjasufi – A Sufi And A Killer

A Sufi And A Killer sounds like Mark E Smith, Timothy Leary, Seasick Steve, George Clinton, Marc Bolan and Flying Lotus using their teeth, yellowed from chewing tobacco, to rip open time itself, then having a jolly good toke on apple tobacco in a shisha cafe. This is a debut album, don't forget. Despite its dizzying array of influences, this is as complete a sound as you're ever going to get.

"You came with weapons: I came with God," says Sumach, and you don't doubt him. The billion or so tracks on the album buzz with a shamanic intensity: the eastern impact of Kowboyz And Indians, the vintage jam of She Gone or the imposing beats underpinning his fragile vocals (an ancient Method Man?) on Ancestors. I don't know where he's coming from or where he's going to, but Sufi, so good. Sorry.

An incredible achievement for Warp and Gaslamp Killer and the rest. Buy Gonjasufi's Sufi And A Killer from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part three)

My top ten is chock full of artists who have embraced the 4/4 rhythm, something which I wouldn't have done a year ago. And so it's a shame to lose Lone, whose Emerald fantasy Tracks evoked the spirit of classic Detroit. Shame to lose Underworld's Barking too. Matthew Dear's Black City didn't dance its way into the top ten either.

The Chemical Brothers got back to techno basics on Further, but it wasn't enough, while One Life Stand from Hot Chip was quite good but, frankly, a bit annoying. iTAL tEK's detailed Midnight Colour was definitely in my top half of the long list, while Susumu Yokota's Kaleidoscope didn't see its way into the final reckoning.

Dan Le Sac, Teebs, The Orb and Kode 9 (he did a DJ Kicks) also didn't make the cut. I was disappointed with Skream's chart-baiting Outside The Box. He needs to start thinking outside the, um, yeah, anyway. Royksopp's Senior had early retirement in the reckoning for this list.

And finally, some artists were excluded because they were probably too guitar-y and not electronica enough,. They include Denis Jones' Red + Yellow = (you must see him live), the Klaxons' Surfing The Void (and yes it was a good album cover) and the electrifying Nerve Up from Lonelady.

This is part three. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part two and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.