Dubnobasswithmyheadman is the third studio album by British electronic music group Underworld, released in the United Kingdom on Junior Boy's Own on 24 January 1994. It was the first Underworld album after the 1980s version of the band had made the transition from synth-pop to electronic dance music and is also the first album to feature Darren Emerson as a band member.
Background
The original line-up of Underworld had split up after a 1989 tour of North America as the support act to Eurythmics. After the tour Karl Hyde had stayed in the United States for two months to work at Prince's Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis as a session musician, and then toured with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie. When Hyde returned to the UK he found his former bandmate Rick Smith had been collaborating on dance tracks with a teenage DJ named Darren Emerson, a friend of Hyde's brother-in-law, at Hyde and Smith's studio in Romford: Emerson had been eager to learn how to use the equipment in a recording studio, and in turn Smith had been keen to have somebody who could introduce him to electronic music and club culture, which he had grown increasingly interested in. The three men started to swap ideas and create songs, resulting in a series of singles released throughout 1992 and 1993 under the names Underworld and Lemon Interupt.
Composition
Underworld's approach to songwriting was very fluid, and based on the idea that everything was valid. Hyde told Melody Maker, "We're grabbing elements from all different times and areas of music and taking them somewhere else. We don't want to simply regurgitate the past, and even though we're using vocals and guitars, we're trying to do it in new ways. We're trying to find ways which makes those elements relevant to today. By not following a blueprint, we're able to base a song on acoustic guitar, or we can do a pure techno track, based on an oscillator. In the past, Rick and I have often been excited by a poem or a film or something and thought, 'That's inspired us to do a great reggae tune but we can't because we're not in a reggae band'. Now we would think, 'Fuck yes, let's do it'." Smith added, "There's a lot of cutting and pasting, especially with the vocals. Something which is recorded for one track one day may well end up on three different tracks a few months down the line. Nothing is fixed. They're just points for us to jump off of."
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| rev2score = 10/10
| rev3 = Encyclopedia of Popular Music
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| rev4 = NME
| rev4score = 8/10
| rev5 = The Rolling Stone Album Guide
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| rev6score = 4/5
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| rev8score = 9/10
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| rev9score = 8/10
Dubnobasswithmyheadman received widespread acclaim from music critics. Writing in Melody Maker, a year before he left to co-found the specialist dance music magazine Muzik, Ben Turner proclaimed that "Dubnobasswithmyheadman is the most important album since The Stone Roses and the best since Screamadelica ... While others are content to go techno techno techno techno [a reference to the lyrics of "No Limit" by 2 Unlimited, a UK No. 1 hit the previous year], Underworld have taken a step back, utilising Karl Hyde and Rick Smith's experience in rock music and throwing it full in the face of 22-year-old DJ, Darren Emerson. The result is utterly contemporary, the sound of the moment, beautifully capturing melodic techno, deranged lyricism, historic bass and lead guitars and astounding walls of rhythm ... This breathtaking hybrid marks the moment that club culture finally comes of age and beckons to everyone." Dele Fadele of NME said, "Before Underworld's startling remixes for Björk and Orbital last year, no-one would've put money on ex-members of ... popsters Freur making the first visionary record of '94 ... The sheer weight of ideas on offer and the constant variance of sounds and textures add up to a coherent, cogent whole, not a series of jack-tracks sequenced together, nor a series of hits with filler thrown in ... By writing 'songs'—albeit playful, deranged ones—Underworld have come up with a solution for the facelessness that blights some dance music."
In 1999, Q included Dubnobasswithmyheadman in its list of the 90 best albums of the 1990s. The following year, Alternative Press named it as one of "10 Essential Dance Albums That Rock". In a retrospective review, John Bush from AllMusic wrote that the album's "innovative blend of classic acid house, techno, and dub" showed that "in a decade awash with stale fusion", Underworld were "truly a multi-genre group".
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| rev2score = 10/10
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| rev5 = Pitchfork
| rev5score = 9.2/10
| rev6 = PopMatters
| rev6score = 10/10
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| rev9score = 9/10
In 2014, the album was reissued on vinyl, Blu-Ray, and 2-CD and 5-CD expanded editions. Reviewing the reissue, Q described the album as "superb" and proposed that Hyde and Smith's previous 14 years of making music "was why the uncannily undated Dubnobasswithmyheadman still exudes such multidimensional sophistication".
CD track listing
20th anniversary 5-CD super deluxe edition
|length6 = 4:10
|title7 = Dark & Long
|note7 = Dark Train
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|length1 = 9:14
|title2 = Cowgirl
|note2 = Irish Pub in Kyoto mix
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|length2 = 11:45
|title3 = Dark & Long
|note3 = Most 'ospitable mix
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|length7 = 20:14
The original version of "Dirty" is almost a minute longer, at 11:14. The remastered version cuts a coda that contained a sample from "Dolls' Polyphony" from the soundtrack to the anime film Akira.
Vinyl track listing
Early prototype
On 3 October 2008, a DAT from 1993 surfaced on Underworld's official messageboard, which featured a different running order, some extended mixes and three previously unreleased songs: "Big Meat Show", "Organ" and "Can You Feel Me", an outtake from previous sessions. The poster of the DAT called it "just a sampling of the type of songs the band was creating, showing any potential label that was interested ..."
Charts
Weekly charts
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! scope="col"| Chart (1999)
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!scope="row"| Japanese Albums (Oricon)
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