Never Get To Zion Without Jah Love

Bringing together several recent themes today I'm offering you some prime Underworld remixes from the mid 90s, a time when we could actually feel fairly optimistic about the world.

Underworld have been all over my stereo recently with the Drift Series 1 Sampler (posted at the weekend). In addition the 90s incarnation of Underworld (Hyde, Smith and Emerson) were at The Vinyl Villain fairy recently with their epic ten minute remix of Human Behaviour- a beat heavy, tribal techno delight, Bjork skipping into the night, called by the drums.

Dreadzone have made a career out of righteous dance- floor based sounds, dub, reggae, techno and progressive house mixed into a heady stew with some politics in there to shake it all up. In Zion Youth singer Earl 16 give the wrongdoers a simple message- heads up Tories...

'You'll never get to Zion without Jah love
Never reach that land you're dreaming of
You must be good you must be careful
Live upright like you know you should...

...No evildoers will be there
No backstabbers will be there'

This remix is a ten minute long excursion- a looped keyboard part, Earl's voice, some echoey, whooshing noises bouncing around and those trademark Underworld rhythms building up a head of steam. There's a break down at eight minutes in and then it's all back on the dub techno train to the fade.

Zion Youth (Underworld Mix)

I have pondered before about an Underworld remix album, a compilation of the cream of their 90s remixes, and am really surprised no one ever put one out, especially in the heyday of CDs when a double disc remix edition would have surely been a winner.

This one from 1993 would have made the cut, a thirteen minute rejigging of William Orbit's Water From A Vine Leaf, a stomping chugger of the highest order. In among all the sonics there's a magnificent piano riff that is worth the price of entry alone, a parping synth part, a nagging upper register synth riff that goes straight to the back of the brain, a snatch of Beth Orton's vocal and a squiggly acid bassline that would cut straight through the dry ice- layers of sounds aimed at feet and the head.

Water From A Vine Leaf (Underwater Mix Part 1) 

Here's the 1993 remix of Bjork, the 110 BPM version from the A-side of the 12". On the flip was a faster one, the 125 BPM Dub, but to my mind this is the pick of the pair. The build up alone is longer (and better) than many songs. This sort of thing could pack a dance-floor tight in the early/mid 90s.

Human Behaviour (The Underworld Mix 110BPM)

This could run and run and I have posted some of these before- there are some heavy duty One Dove remixes, a pair of very techno Chemical Brothers bangers, a tasty remix of The Drum Club's Sound System, a fifteen minute St Etienne remix, Orbital's Lush and some outliers like Front 242 and Shakespeare's Sister (neither of which it seems I own either digitally of physically).