Freur/Underworld mk1

Few people outside of big Underworld fans and house music trivia buffs know that the popular UK electronic act Underworld did in fact begin life as a pretty campy New Romantic unit, complete with the ridiculous hair and outfits that would make the band members turn all sorts of shades of red if you showed it to them today. Karl Hyde and Rick Smith had met at Cardiff College and decided to start a band called the Screen Gemz and self-released only one single before seeking out a full band. They were joined by bass player Alfie Thomas, drummer Bryn Burrows, and keyboardist John Warwicker used an unpronounceable squiggle for the name. Of course, the record company didn't quite buy into this idea and forced them to change it to the equally unpronounceable Freur. Sounds kind of pretentious and overly arty, but this was a keyboard-drenched New Wave band that wrote pop songs, and pretty good ones at that. Their initial single, "Doot Doot", charted at 59, and the resulting album was a minor success. However, their next five singles floundered and their sophomore album tanked - Warwicker soon left the band and they decided to take their act to another record company, picking up bass player Baz Allen, renaming the band Underworld, and signing to a new label. They experienced an oddly similar fate - their first single, "Underneath the Radar" did well, but subsequent singles didn't, and the band again became virtually unknown by their second album and split up. Hyde and Smith decided to soldier on, and well...you know the rest.

Anyways, I've decided to split this material off from the better known Underworld material, or Underworld mk2, mostly because nobody really considers Underneath the Radar or Change the Weather "real" Underworld albums - perhaps they have the same name and singer but musically the groups are completely different, and besides one early and rare mk2 single there's no other real connection between the two. So it gets grouped together with Freur because UW mk1 are basically the same band, although they did change their sound a good deal for the worse. Most Underworld fans see this variant of the band as being something of a footnote to the band's more successful era, and many discographies won't even list the mk1 stuff. Still, I think that it deserves its due, particularly the Freur albums, which I really do enjoy a lot, to the point where I'm willing to sacrifice a lot of my credibility to rate them highly.

Freur - Doot-Doot **** (1983)
I know I only mentioned one keyboard player above, but Rick Smith also played keyboards, and Alfie Thomas is credited for keys as well! Given this is not progressive rock but instead New Romantic, you have a good idea of what to expect here - most of the tracks have minimal guitars, and most of the melodies are played on the synths. If that makes you want to puke, go ahead and skip onto Underworld mk2, but if you can admit to liking A Flock of Seagulls and that one song by When in Rome - well, this may just be up your alley. Freur did know how to get some beautiful noises out of their keyboards - "Whispering" may only use a variant on the electric piano, but it's used to such a great effect that it's perhaps one of the most deeply resonant tracks of the entire New Romantic movement. Of course, part of this is due to the fantastic vocals by Karl Hyde, whose deep croon shoots straight for the heart, and let's face it - while people don't sing like this anymore, it's perfect for this kind of music. It's the combination of lush keyboards and vocals that propelled the title track right to the middle of the charts, despite being decidedly downtempo - it sounds like the chilling end to some kind of epic (and indeed, it was used in Vanilla Sky - but only a small portion), except it's the leadoff track, which it really shouldn't be. The downtempo feel is repeated a lot throughout the album, resulting in a few reflective yet still catchy tracks ("Runaway", "Matters of the Heart"), with the band only really rocking out once ("Riders in the Night"), although they can break out into a fun slap-bass funk number ("My Room"). That's really the crux of this album - while the New Romantic movement produced an awful lot of dated garbage, when the stuff's done right - that is, catchy melodies, good vocals, dense keyboard sounds, and a great production sense to bring it all out - it can really shine. Seems to have a bunch of bonus tracks associated with it - mine had a 12" mix of "Doot Doot" and "Hold Me Mother", but I've heard some of their later singles made its way to later reissues.

Freur - Get Us Out Of Here (1985) ****
For the most part the vulnerable act was dropped here, with the band instead taking on the form of an upbeat pop band. It seems like it would be a bad direction, pigeonholing Freur into the same direction every other band was taking - keyboard-driven pop written mostly with the intention of scoring a hit single. But it works - this is like Depeche Mode's "Master and Servent" over and over again, as Freur loads the album with catchy tunes one after another, sometimes so upbeat and hooky that you can't help but want to sing along ("Piano Song", "A.O.K.O."), with others that would have made fine radio singles ("Look in the Back for Answers", "Endless Groove") - let's just say this is one hell of an addicting album, exactly the kind I wish would come along more often; where the artists drop their pretenses and just have fun. Doesn't really have many moods outside of "ridiculously catchy" though, as even the slower tracks are earworms. Now that's never a bad thing - hell, most bands can barely write one or two genuinely catchy tunes a year, and this album comes fully stocked. But there's not much else to it - you'll want to sing along, but you won't really feel much, mostly due to the sound not being as full as it was on the last album, where you could really get caught up in the keyboard textures. Everything here seems to be mixed flat, and there's this terrible vocal hiss that shows up in most of the tracks. If this was well-produced, I'd probably bump this up half a star. That may be due to the crappy rip I've got - it's 192 kbps, which is usually fine, but it sounds like it's ripped from vinyl (as one of the tracks suddenly speeds up 3 seconds in to change the key), which could explain the flat sound, although this one does include seven bonus tracks (including one with some crazy beatboxing!), which suggests a CD. As it turns out though, the CD was never available in most countries, which to me says it could have been a rush mastering job, so I guess I won't know the "true" rating until I either find the vinyl or they remaster the CD (as they did the first one), neither of which seems likely right now.

Underworld - Underneath the Radar (1988) **1/2
Essentially the same band as Freur, except new member Baz Allen gets writing credits on everything, leading me to wonder if the band's new slick corporate synth-rock sound was his doing or if it was an insistence from the record company (possibly both). Either way you can say goodbye to the resonant synthesizer textures of the former band and hello to a bland and cheap sounding plethora of generic catchy tunes. If you're in love with 80's synth-rock you'll find something to like here - the piano-based leadoff "Glory! Glory!" is punchy and memorable, and the closing "God Song" despite being exceedingly campy is hard to resist. And in between? Well, the title track and "I Need a Doctor" are both fun sing-alongs, with the former actually placing somewhere on the tracks due to a chug-along rhythm and a memorable vocal melody ("A-see ya later, a-see ya later, hip uhnuh now now") placing it somewhere along the lines of "Der Kommissar" and "Electric Avenue". That's all well and good, but this just isn't a very solid album besides, with most of the rest of the tracks sporting maybe one solid vocal hook at most. This results in a few of tunes where you'll remember the chorus but won't be able to piece together anything else ("Call Me No. 1", "Rubber Ball"), and the effort to deliver a resonant "Doot Doot"-like track is pretty much a failure ("Pray"). Undoubtedly many will come to this to hear what the old Underworld was like and be disappointed - it's not terrible, but you should probably just download the title track and leave it at that.

Underworld - Change the Weather (1989) ***
They sound more confident here, and even flesh out their tunes to the point where it's easier to tell them apart. They're also a good bit more ridiculous, but that works in their favor - let's face it, if not for Karl's scat singing on "Mercy", or the ridiculous lyrics to "Mr. Universe" ("It comes into your head, you stick it in your hat you shout Attack! Attack! Attack!, and don't look back") would either be worth listening to? Am I the only one who likes 80's camp here? Perhaps there's nothing as fun as "Underneath the Radar" on this one, but it's altogether more solid, with a general increased tempo making a number of the tracks even rock out a bit ("Thrash", "Sole Survivor"), and there's at least as many catchy hooks ("Stand Up"), so I guess this is the better of the two mk1 albums, and this one was actually born in the CD age, meaning unlike Get Us Out Of Here, it can be found - but it's not as addictive as that album was, and again most fans of the post-80's Underworld will just feel embarrassed for them, but it's at least a fun diversion.