Phew! Beaucoup!

Underworld: "Beaucoup Fish" (JBO/V2)

If you follow the line that all albums have their perfect settings, then Beaucoup Fish is music for driving. A spin through a neon-lit city by night, to be exact - but any straight stretch of road will do for this trip. For their third outing, Darren Emerson, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have simply got jiggy with a brand new range of beats and grooves. Yes, there are traces of predecessors Second Toughest and Dubnobass . . . but you have to look very closely to find them. They have resisted an urge (if there was one) to produce an album housing 12 takes on Born Slippy, their breakthrough single from 1996. Sure, Karl Hyde's cut-and-paste lyrics are still dwelling on the edge (check King Of Snake for his Beat Takeshi take on a snake-fight in Tokyo) and sure, the beats crunch like never before - but it's all about progression rather than regression, absinthe rather than lager you could say. Within four minutes of Cups, the epic stomp which opens this album and sets the mood, we have encountered slices of dub, deep house, shiny electro and more. What really impresses here is not so much the variety (a long-time Underworld trademark) or the imagination on show, but the energy. Then again, this hyperactivity is everywhere, from the manic strains on Jumbo to the sweet tug of Push Upstairs. For Underworld, zipping in and out of styles without pausing to catch their breaths is the way forward. Beaucoup Fish is accelerated Underworld rather than the one which got away.