Underworld "Second Toughest in the Infants" (1996)
Another electronic album... though I guess the genre was going through something of a renaissance at this point.
The members of Underworld had started off playing electro pop in a
couple of different bands. Even the early incarnation of Underworld
itself had been more in an electro-rock, electro-pop direction. The
band enlisted DJ Darren Emerson and moved more fully into
techno/electronica, working with pulsing beats and repetitive looped
musical ideas.
This approach creates the musical bed for the minimalist and again often
repeated vocals. There was a time when I didn't really dig this style
of music, I preferred a constant influx of new ideas or at least some
regular evolution of the main idea. I think now I'm less able to
absorb that unless I'm focussing solely on the music. I used to be
able to listen to quite complex all-over-the-show music while reading a
book or writing etc, but now I find I need to give a lot more attention
to my listening. Having something that loops and repeats that I can
wander in and out of has an ever increasing appeal.
