Underworld (Band) / YMMV

Awesome Music: Arguably their greatest track, "Born Slippy .NUXX", is both a fan favourite and the band's most successful song ever. Their second most popular, "Dark & Long (Dark Train)", shoots for the moon as well. Notable in that both songs are in fact remixes made by Underworld of their own original songs; and both remixes were part of the score for the film Trainspotting.
- If "Cowgirl" doesn't sound familiar at first, skip to 2:48 and your memories of the film Hackers (and 90s techno in general) will flood back. The song is usually performed live as a medley with "Rez", a similarly euphoric techno song in the same key.
- Their soundtrack for Sunshine could count as well, especially songs like "Mercury" and "Capa Meets the Sun."
- And in their recent soundtrack for Danny Boyle's theatre version of Frankenstein (2011) there's "Come Scientist Destroy."
- "And I Will Kiss" and "Caliban's Dream" from the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.
- The 1996 bootleg known as European Club Gig. YMMV, but widely considered one of their finest performances, even if no-one knows where or when it was recorded^note.
- "Always Loved A Film," while surprisingly conventional by Underworld standards, is still absurdly catchy.
Early-Installment Weirdness: The first episode of the DRIFT series featured the band acclimating to creating a weekly audiovisual release, and its rough edges show when compared to later episodes. While the audiovisual version of Episode 1 was full of radio edit-length videos, the visuals for later installments were full-song length. For the boxset of Series 1, Episode 1 was entirely re-sequenced and included an ambient piece released 4 months before the project began to flesh the episode out.
Eclipsed by the Remix: Their two biggest hits, "Dark & Long (Dark Train)" and "Born Slippy .NUXX", are actually remixes. The original songs actually sound nothing like their remixes. Not helping matters is that music publications and even other musicians have dropped the "(Dark Train)" and ".NUXX" parts of the names when discussing, covering or remixing these two songs.
Even Better Sequel: dubnobasswithmyheadman was pretty much universally acclaimed and seemingly a tough act to follow, but somehow Second Toughest in the Infants surpassed it. Once Trainspotting Fever took hold, Beaucoup Fish was heavily anticipated and it too managed to go exceed the expectations laid upon Second Toughest. Despite all that, though...
First Installment Wins: The dubnobasswithmyheadman period, their first album of the Mk 2 lineup, is so universally loved that even their greatest hits compilations can't deny it. Their first greatest hits 1992-2002 spent 8 of its 16 tracks on 1992-1994, the latter year being when dubnobasswithmyheadman came out; the other 8 songs are from 1995-2002 and cover their three other albums at that time. This gets worse with 1992-2012 An Anthology, which keeps 7 of the first 8 tracks but spends the other 9 songs on a longer period, 1995-2012, representing five other albums and a couple songs from soundtracks.
Song Association:
- Both "Dark & Long (Dark Train)" and "Born Slippy .NUXX" are often just called "That song from Trainspotting".
- Many WipEout fans would associate "Tin There" and "Kittens" with WipEout 2097/XL and Wip3out, (while a remixed version of the latter by Will Saul and Tam Cooper was heard in WipEout 2048 respectively).
- "Pearl's Girl" appeared in Gran Turismo 6.
- "Lenny Lane" was featured in Forza Motorsport 2.
- "Glam Bucket" and "To Heal" were used as the garage music in Need for Speed: Undercover.

YMMV / Underworld (Band)

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