Album Review: Strawberry Hotel by Underworld

Rick Smith and Karl Hyde present a satisfying ebb and flow across a variety of musical styles, with euphoric chord shifts and big techno behemoths present and correct Underworld know how to play the long game. Now closing in on their fifth decade as a band, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith are following up their massive Drift project, which saw them write close on seven hours of music while somehow not taking their eye off the ball. Their on-record chemistry has blossomed throughout their musical ventures, with Hyde given free poetic reign while ever more effective and pictorial visions are dreamed up behind him.

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Sonic exploration resumes. Underworld threw caution to the wind on their massive Drift 1 Series, which spanned over the course of a year between 2018 and 2019. This led to an epic amount of music that reached out in multiple sonic directions. Of course, the legendary electronic act could not provide stellar output every week, however, quality was prevalent throughout the entire collection.

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In 2018, Underworld undertook a mission that would test the limits of their creativity and unleash new palettes of colour in the process. Drift, a year-long music and video experiment where they promised to bring out a new release every Thursday, proved the durability of a band already recognised as pioneering electronic legends. When the project was wrapped up at the end of October 2019, it had clearly been a success, sucking in artists like Ø and The Necks for memorable collaborations, and the DRIFT Series 1 Sampler Edition compiled after the event is arguably one of Underworld's finest and most unusual albums to date.

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