Oblivion With Bells CD+DVD (2007)

First Released in 2007.

Coming off the back of Rick and Karl’s pioneering Riverrun project (something of a proto-DRIFT, where ideas were explored and exploded in a series of seamlessly stitched together MP3s), Oblivion With Bells finds Underworld in experimental mood. It was the first record to take full advantage of the Pigshed studio - the band’s home from home, situated in a converted silo sat conspicuously in the middle of miles and miles of Essex countryside. 

The freedom that the Pigshed granted the band is there in the music You can hear it in the glistening, dreamscape techno that seems to stretch out into infinity and beyond (Crocodile, Glam Bucket) and through Beautiful Burnout’s rattling descent into the gloaming; it’s there in the almost impossibly beautiful secular prayer To Heal (the piece of music that soundtracked Capa blissfully meeting his end in the movie Sunshine), in Ring Road’s gyrator system beat poetry, the intimate electronic cuddle of Faxed Invitation and the snaking dub pulse and chopped up dialogue of Best Mamgu Ever. 

Like Riverrun before it, Oblivion With Bells unknowingly points towards Underworld’s future - particularly the future heard as in DRIFT; a future where stranger ideas are allowed the same platform and the same amplification as the sure fire bangers.