Underworld are a British electronic music group formed in 1987 in Cardiff, Wales[1] and the principal collaborative project of Karl Hyde and Rick Smith.

After briefly performing as a funk and synth-pop outfit, resulting in two albums between 1988 and 1989, Underworld gained prominence after reshaping into a dance and techno band, releasing albums including Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994), Second Toughest in the Infants (1996) and Beaucoup Fish (1999), as well as singles "Born Slippy Nuxx" and "Dark & Long (Dark Train)".

Known for their atmospheric, progressive compositions, Hyde's cryptic and stream of consciousness lyrics, and dynamic live performances, Underworld have influenced a wide range of artists and have been featured in soundtracks and scores for films and television.

In the late 1970s, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith formed a band in Cardiff called the Screen Gemz, which was influenced by Kraftwerk and reggae.

[3] The band had just finished a stadium tour opening for Eurythmics and had incurred a large debt that Smith spent a year attempting to pay off.

[2] Hyde recalled feeling miserable during the Eurythmics tour, and said of Underworld Mk1, "We’d subvert what we naturally did to fit an idea of what was going to be successful in the charts, and we just weren’t very good at it.

"[3] After a break—to concentrate on, among other things, art/design project Tomato—Hyde and Smith recruited DJ Darren Emerson and signed to Steven Hall's Junior Boys Own label.

The signature Hyde lyrics were in place: poetic, hypnotic and whispered; mixing conventional song writing with the use of found material from overheard conversations, answering machine recordings and the like.

Hyde had been the lead singer in Underworld Mk1 but the original Hyde/Smith dance material was lyric-free as was most of the electronic music emerging from the aftermath of acid house.

The single and the album showed Underworld maturing as a trio, mixing elements of techno, house, drum and bass and experimental music.

[citation needed] After the release of fifth studio album Beaucoup Fish in 1999, Hyde declared in his interviews that he had sorted out earlier problems with alcoholism but all the members admitted that the sessions had been fraught with problems, with the individual members working in their own studios and only communicating via mixes of the raw material passed back and forth on DAT.

While touring in the summer and autumn of 2005, the duo was joined on stage by Darren Price, a DJ and producer who had remixed Underworld releases in the past.

Karl Hyde appeared with Brian Eno on the final day of the Eno-curated Luminous Festival at Sydney Opera House.

"Pure Scenius" consisted of three live improvised performances on the same day, featuring Eno, Hyde, Australian improv trio the Necks, electronic artist Jon Hopkins and guitarist Leo Abrahams.

On 8 March 2010, Mark Knight and D. Ramirez released the single "Downpipe", which featured vocal contributions from Underworld's Karl Hyde.

The song, released on Mark Knight's Toolroom Records label, has a music video featuring the "Playhouse", a lighting setup on Liberty Hall, the tallest building in Dublin.

[14] The album features collaborations with German trance producer Paul van Dyk and British house artists Mark Knight and D. Ramirez, among others.

[15] On 25 August 2010, Rick Smith released a limited edition solo album Bungalow With Stairs 1, music to accompany "What's Going on in Your Head When You're Dancing" an exhibition of paintings by Karl Hyde at the Laforet Museum, Harajuku, Tokyo during 2010.

In December 2010 it was announced that Underworld would reunite with Trainspotting director Danny Boyle to write the musical score for his production of Frankenstein at the Royal National Theatre.

1992–2012 Anthology is a 3-disc set and is a refreshed and revisited version of 1992–2002 with more material, unreleased tracks and rarities to go some way to completing the picture of the first two decades of Underworld.

[16] The band also contributed two original tracks for the opening ceremony: "And I Will Kiss" (featuring Dame Evelyn Glennie with the Pandemonium Drummers) and "Caliban's Dream" in collaboration with the Dockhead Choir, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Only Men Aloud, Elizabeth Roberts, Esme Smith (band member Rick Smith's daughter[17]) and Alex Trimble.

In 2017, joining once again with frequent collaborator Danny Boyle, Smith wrote the musical score and produced the soundtrack for T2 Trainspotting.

Another new song, "Bells & Circles", was a collaboration with Iggy Pop that came out of sessions recorded a couple years earlier for possible inclusion on the T2 Trainspotting soundtrack.

[30] On 1 November 2018, Underworld started a year-long experimental music-and-video project named Drift, which aimed to release the band's new and previously unreleased material on a weekly basis.

Underworld have been mentioned as an influence by a number of video game composers, such as Nobuyoshi Sano,[34] Andrew Sega,[35] Jesper Kyd,[36] Michiel van den Bos,[37] and Rom Di Prisco.

[38] In 2008, the band participated in an album called Songs for Tibet, "to express our support for the Tibetan people... at a time when the eyes of the world are on China" (referring to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing).