From The Gutter To The Stars

In town yesterday among the hordes of Christmas shoppers and groups of young men in Christmas jumpers out for an all day session were a small but persistent group of Christians spreading goodwill and peace to all.

Underworld's year long Drift project has seen them release a new song every Thursday starting in November 2018 and finishing last month. It seems to have reinvigorated them completely. They've released the entire thing, music and films, as a box set plus an easier to digest single CD/double vinyl album called Drift Series 1 Sampler. The fourteen songs that make up the sampler album are the best thing Underworld have done since whatever your last favourite Underworld album was. It is a brilliant, innovative and moving collection of songs that come together amazingly well, especially given the manner they were recorded in, on the hoof and freewheeling.

The song that closes the Drift Series 1 Sampler originally came out back in April and is an absolute beauty, a ten minute marriage of slight euphoria and melancholic regret. Custard Speedtalk opens with drums and there's a synth part which is a bit Rez-y, capable of triggering all kinds of early 90s flashbacks and dewy eyed nostalgia before the bass buzzes its way in and the piano and happy sad keyboards take it up. At about two minutes forty someone says 'this is good' and a little later Karl starts singing, seemingly about a ex- lover who has gone but who he's just seen somewhere with someone new and the pangs of regret that come with that. Strings and maybe a guitar come and go and the piano part becomes more insistent. Dreamy, layered music and a very internal vocal.

'You don't know what's going on
But you're not stupid
You refuse to change
You're much more well rounded'

By the end it feels pretty uplifting, like you've been saved from something. God knows we could do with some of that right now.

The video is lovely as well, filmed from the windows of a train from night through to the early morning sun, rushing past railway stations, bridges, train yards, canals, cranes, office buildings, blocks of flats and allotments with other trains filmed in reflections, all in a sideways motion.