Underworld: These Days.

Underworld play the Boiler Room at 9.30pm the Big Day Out at the Gold Coast Parklands on Sunday.

Underworld have rightful claim to being one of the most important electronic acts of the nineties, and last year found them releasing their fourth album, A Hundred Days Off, and redefining the boundaries of the band in the process. Working as a duo since the departure of DJ Darren Emmerson after the recording of 2000s Beaucoup Fish, Underworld have continued a musical journey that began with 1993s Dubnobasswithmyhead to what is perhaps its illogical conclusion. Renowned for their stunning and elegant live shows, vocalist and producer Karl Hyde and his collaborator Rick Smith virtually shut down their lives outside the studio for A Hundred Days Off, concentrating not on what they believed would work on a dancefloor, but rather what felt right musically for the act.

“What we really meant was for, for us to forget about Underworld and playing live for a while, and Rick and me just made the music that we wanted to make,” Hyde confirms. “So in this instance it really was a sense of we could walk away from Underworld right now and things would get strange but we could do it if we wanted too, and that pressure coming off enabled us to, to just float around and make the music that we wanted to make, and being I suppose a very eclectic group of people, those influences started to creep in. I'm just grateful that there are some tracks on there that seem to be doing the business in the nightclub, because that after all is the route that we started from.”

Do you still feel connected with that world?

“It's funny, I do subconsciously although we've not been to any clubs for quite some time, but yeah, subconsciously I do. If the music hasn't got a groove, then I'm a bit lost for direction. Certainly on stage there's always a grin when you know that the music is, is still doing it on the dance floor.”

A Hundred Days Off sounds incredibly positive, does that accurately reflect where you two are coming from at the moment?

“I think so. When we came back from Japan in November 2000, there was a conscious decision to apply some of the ideas that had been kicking around for a while which was, do you want to work hard or work easy, do you want to live a stressed life or not. We wanted to do all the positive things that were gonna help us sustain a happy life I suppose, and it seems to have come out in the music.”

There's kinda a really child like feel to the album title. A Hundred Days Off sounds like the kinda thing a six year old might say.

“Mmmm, that is exactly the kind of thing that a six year old would say. It was Rick's daughter on the way to school, saying it'd be great not to go to school anymore, or maybe just do a day and then maybe take a hundred days off. Got it, title.”

How have you found the kind of process of emerging from your sort of studio cocoon into the sort of bright lights of being in stage in front of thousands of people?

“I'm looking forward to being out on stage an awful lot, because such an immediate process, I enjoy making music, I enjoy what happens when Rick drops a great groove, something happens in my blood and I animate, and I like that feeling, I think I've, haven't animated enough for too long now.”

What, what can we expect from your shows?

“A lot of sweat, lots of energy, I hope. I hope these legs can still cut it. We've got a new production which does make me smile, I've gotta say, and images, inspired by things that I've done on the internet that Rick and I have carried on. We’ve got the same crew which I'm really looking forward to going back out again, which means some of the guys we've been with for about fifteen sixteen years now, and you just know you hand over your life to them and it comes back in one piece.”

Funnily, because your careers have spanned such a long period of time, you could almost say that dance music's been a phase in Underworld's career rather than the other way around.

“I suppose it has in a way, although without dance music I think we would've continued to drift around without a route and dance music has given us a home. We can say that's the basic start of the group and certainly without that thing that dance music brings, you know that sort of joyous celebration of physical madness, going out live would be a very different experience for me.”