Underworld
Second Toughest in the Infants

A shiver down the spine, accompanied by the phenomenon commonly known as goosebumps. That's what I felt listening to Second Toughest in the Infants, the fourth album by Underworld released way back in 1996, three years after the electrifying Dubnobasswithmyheadman. The passage of time, however, seems not to have affected the beauty of this sonic gem, one of the most successful manifestations of club culture and electronics of the last thirty years.

The English trio, having left behind their synth-pop past after the arrival of Darren Emerson, sought to interpret the emotions of the dancing tribe of the Nineties, yearning for freedom after the collapse of the USSR and the fall of all divisions between East and West. In that context, the band's insights were condensed into a mix of techno, trance, and progressive-house alternated with more suspended tracks, a recipe that found in Dubnobasswithmyheadman a perfect balance, difficult to replicate.

So what to do but push beyond, accentuating the experimental side of the project and incorporating elements from drum and bass, breakbeat, and those genres that, born from the early decade rave cauldron, were inevitably influencing the evolution of electronic sound? Said and done.

Second Toughest in the Infants (a title born from a response by Rick Smith's nephew to a question about his school progress) was recorded in 1995 and released in March of the following year. A few months later, the cult movie Trainspotting, directed by the young Danny Boyle and accompanied by a highly respectable soundtrack, would be released. In the tracklist stands out the epic “Born Slippy”, where the techno-trance and the chants of Karl Hyde reach remarkable emotional peaks thanks to that alternation between angelic and infernal moments that has always constituted the group's trademark.

With “Born Slippy”, Underworld achieves well-deserved success and for the occasion, a reissue of Second Toughest in the Infants will be prepared containing the Nuxx version of the piece and the splendid “Rez”, as if to add further quality to a majestic work, to say the least excellent.

The eight tracks of the album thus mark an evolution from a sound perspective, which in Second Toughest... turns out to be more muffled, layered, at times monolithic. To open the dances (in every sense of the word) is “Juanita : Kiteless : To Dream Of Love”, a sixteen-minute suite in which techno, progressive-house, and ambient blend in an astonishing way. The endless modulations of Karl Hyde's voice accompany the three movements of the track, capable of sinking us into an abyss or soaring us into the air, among obsessive rhythms and reverberations fading into nothing. It is difficult to interpret the meaning of the words, a succession of images, echoes, and memories that makes Underworld's proposal even more elusive and suggestive (“There is a sound on the other side of this wall/A bird is singing on the other side of this glass/Footsteps/Concealed/Silence is preserving a voice”).

The two parts of “Banstyle / Sappy’s Curry” reaffirm the inclination for long and dilated times; however, the mood becomes more relaxed, transitioning from a smooth drum and bass to an atmospheric trip-hop, dominated by evocative guitars and keyboards. The desire to open up to new musical horizons emerges powerfully in “Pearl’s Girl”, a track characterized by "broken" drums, sampled voices, and magmatic sounds. Particularly evocative is the text, centered on a night spent in Hamburg at the Rioja club, among excellent soul (“Rioja Rioja, Reverend Al Green”), blurred visions, and memories surfacing like boats on the Elbe river.

In between, we find other emotional moments, impossible to forget: the subtle variations of “Confusion the Waitress”, where Karl Hyde hints at the doubts and anxieties a woman feels for her partner (“She said you can say anything you need/She said you can be anywhere you feel/She said just pick up the phone”); the acid-techno of “Rowla”, capable of transforming the ethereal introduction into a wild track, perfect for a millennium-end party; the crescendo of “Air Towel”, at times irresistible.

In “Blueski”, a distorted guitar sample projects us into a hypnotic interlude with a minimalist flavor. We are in the “chill-out” phase, the party is over, and there is only time left to stagger through the streets of London before reaching home, as happens in the splendid “Stagger” (“Scratches on paper pissed in a tubehole straighten/Smelling of deep-fried beans and whispering your name/Tubehole wind in my face thunder in gentle distance/Reactor, reactor, do you mind straighten?”).

Silence, the curtain falls and numerous impressions crowd our minds, while we are engaged (so to speak) in contemplating the cosmic void. We are facing a work that is not too bold to define as a concept album, capable of interpreting the spirit of club culture and those Nineties that saw the explosion of dance music in all its multiple aspects.

Of course, some may prefer the formal perfection of Dubnobasswithmyheadman or the magnificent Beaucoup Fish. It is objectively difficult to determine which is the best album by the British band, yet every time I listen to Second Toughest in the Infants I feel the same sensations: that shiver along the spine and then the goosebumps I described at the beginning, inexplicable phenomena caused by the sound flows of a stratospheric work, a true timeless classic.