Second Toughest in the Infants

Just from an album sequencing perspective why couldn’t they have split up the 15 minute songs instead of putting them back to back? I thought the song Stagger was quite interesting, but I had to wade through an hour of music before it to get there. Pearl’s Girl is pretty good too.

There's a lot of british electronica on here, it can't all be special. I vibed with this more than I expected event though it's repetitive AF.
Highlights: banstyle/sappys curry

Decent, mellow, minimalistic and stuff

Banger

Moody and complex electronica

I don't have any strong opinions on techno. I use it to drown out the neighbour's screaming kid when I'm trying to work from home. In that sense, it is the most useful music in the world.

Great album with its own unique sound.

Bloody hell I hated this. Absolute slog to get through. All I know of them is Born Slippy which is an all time banger of a tune so I had high hopes for this. Instead I was left utterly bored and disappointed.

Not the worst thing ive ever heard but a solid contender for most boring

I quite like it, though not as much as the grade I'm going to give it - I'm grading very much on a curve. You see, this album should be 3.5 stars. It's good, maybe bordering on very good with the caveat that it's boilerplate BOOTSandHATS techno and should be listened to primarily while taking drugs or in the background while working in an office or cubicle well after your drug-taking days have concluded. But we don't get half stars in this project, so that's out.

So this album should be 3 stars. It's good, but (prior caveats notwithstanding), it's not *very* good, you know? So then why am I rating it 4 stars? Because I have massively fucked up my own personal ratings. I've had some halfway shitty albums that I've rated 3 stars, because I didn't hate them enough to rate them 2 stars. but now I like this album way, WAY more than those albums, so is it fair to give it the same rating? I gave Tim fucking Buckley 3 stars, FFS, and now I'm supposed to give *this* 3 stars? yesterday's album was Let's Get Killed by David Holmes, a very pedestrian, albeit listenable, album of the same genre, and this one is way better. So how do I give it 3 stars?

I don't know, but this is taking up too much space in my life. It's pretty good if you like techno. The end.

Garbo

This was an intriguing discovery for me. For those who don't know, Underworld is a British electronic group, primarily consisting of vocalist/guitarist Karl Hyde and keyboardist/mixer Rick Smith. They started as an alternative synthpop act in the 1980s before pivoting to dance and techno from the 1990s onward.

Listening to Second Toughest in the Infants gave me the sense of the breadth and depth of electronic composition that Underworld can conjure. Opening with the multiple-suite works of "Juanita: Kiteless: To Dream of Love" and "Banstyle/Sappy's Curry", they're capable of ebbing and weaving through various hypnotic stylings, from aggressive breakbeat to softer ambient, from popping house beats to lush synthesizers over a drum-and-bass rhythm section. All the while, they introduce elements that help identify and anchor the tracks, such as the acoustic guitar strumming on cuts like "Stagger", the distorted synthesizer on "Rowla", and Karl's observational lyrics whispered over the mix. The duo certainly did their best to give each of these compositions its distinctive flavor, with enough twists and turns to try and maintain listener engagement.

That said, this album still runs rather long at 73 minutes, though paradoxically, the fault is not with the opening two tracks, as those were some of the most enticing electronic pieces I heard in some time. Instead, there was a more noticeable lull in the second half of the record, between the repeated synth notes of "Air Towel" and the spare acoustic melody of "Blueski" that felt underdeveloped. I wish these tracks had more time in the oven in comparison to others on this record.

Still, Second Toughest in the Infants was a solid electronic record, as Underworld redefined themselves to become one of the more distinguishable electronic acts out there.

I actually totally dug this album. It was that old school hacker shit kind of techno that you could never really dance socially to, haha. It made me want to download a car.

english electronic albums from the 90s be much longer challenge

I wish I had a chance to give this a second listen, unfortunately it just couldn't happen today. Second Toughest In The Infants is some really detailed, texturally interesting electronic music that I got a lot out of. The compositions here are lengthy and almost trancelike, with a kind of melancholic, chilly atmosphere. The sounds are tasteful, and the way the compositions evolve is really organic and makes these songs go by pretty quickly for how long they are. For example, Juanita : Kiteless : To Dream Of Love and Banstyle/Sappy's Curry are *both* longer than 15 minutes, and they are brisk and engaging throughout, as long as you are kind of willing to be carried away by the music here. Karl Hyde's vocals fit in nicely too, with some surprisingly good melodies. The only problem I could really have with this album is just that depending on mood, this can be better background music than something to actively engage with, but it works well like that too. Underworld come through with a really cool project here, and I could see it growing on me more, I will almost certainly be coming back to this in some certain settings.

I’m at a 4 – closer to a 3.5 bumped up to a 4, but a 4 regardless.

I always think it’s a little hard to write about an electronica album, since it really does usually just boil down to enjoyment of the beats, and in this case, I generally enjoyed them. This sounds exactly like what 1996 techno / electronica should be, and I don’t think there’s ever a bad track here. There’s certainly ones that didn’t click for me, like “Confusion the Waitress”, “Air Towel” & “Blueski”, but they’re not bad, just actively a little more stagnant & boring than the rest of the album.

So, why only a 4 then? Well, it’s long as hell, for one. A lot of these could’ve been trimmed a bit – it’s not necessarily an issue in the moment while you’re just grooving & moving around, so much like a Nintendo game, the flaws aren’t really there until you hold it up to a microscope and take a deep, deep analysis. There’s sections of each track that just sit in a general soundscape just a little too long, and those slowly build up over the course of the album, even in a subconscious space. Like I said though, it’s not that noticeable.

The big thing, at least for my ears, is that this album just gives a little too much space to the vocals, as opposed to letting the instrumentation shine at its brightest. A lot of these tracks don’t have super compelling lyrics, so giving the vocals as much space as they do, where they sort of trim around the instrumentals & the entrancing effect of the beats, makes it feel like the album can’t decide quite what niche it wants to fill. Don’t get me wrong, the balance between the vocals / instrumentals is still pretty correctly skewed towards the instrumentals, but when it’s noticeable that the vocals have center stage, it’s really noticeable, and drags down the album for me, since they just don’t blend as well on a number of tracks.

When this album is rolling, though? This is damn good electronica. It’s much more into the trance / techno side of things, as opposed to the more dance-y / plunderphonics stuff we’ve generally been getting, but I’m not complaining about that one bit. Even for the first 32 minutes of this album, over the course of 2 rather long tracks, I thought that the layering and progression throughout both of them was incredibly satisfying. The plunk on a lot of the percussion / bass / synths here is super effective, especially with headphones in. When this album gets into a zen state, it’s very easy to feel, and those moments are where this whole thing shines. Big shoutout to “Rowla”, by the way.

I want to really harp on the last track, “Stagger”, because I have a very strange comparison I wrote down, and yet it’s one that I think works – “This feels like if R.E.M. made an album like Kid-A, but chose to base it off of Kraftwerk’s electronica style.” The vocals throughout this album, even when they’re not really blending into the soundscape, do feel just a little bit like Michael Stipe. “Stagger”, with the way the synth melodies go, really feels like a sort of modern take (for 1996) on Kraftwerk’s general 70s style. It’s a bit washed away by choosing to end the album on some remarkably annoying drums, but regardless, I think it’s a super cool closer, and I’d kind of love to hear an entire album in that style, albeit with more polish. Hopefully, something like that is on the list.

Overall, then, I did enjoy this. It’s certainly long at 73 minutes, but it’s never ever sonically boring & it’s always competently passable at its worst. For me, there’s moments that are more stale than others, but it all boils down to taste. I don’t quite hear some of the bigger acclaim this album seems to have gotten, but I can understand why it did, especially for 1996. I don’t think it’ll ever hit a 5 for me, but I like it enough where I think a 4 is pretty deserved.

It's taken me days to fully absorb this one. Very impressive listen that has a pull to it. This will be in my rotation for the year for sure. 5/5

It's so funny how music originally meant for getting off your tits on e at rave is also so good for drowning out the world to really zoom in on a couple of fuck off spreadsheets.

This album goes so hard. I never listened to Underworld or much house music at all but I'm such a sucker for the effortless gothic cool of tracks like Confusion the Waitress and Pearl's Girl. The first two songs are great but too long for me and it makes the album feel top-heavy whereas I think the most interesting ideas start with track 3.

Hat seine Höhen, hat seine Tiefen. 3 Sterne