IT was the night of the big speakers and the crowd at Dublin's Point were getting ready to ascend into the Underworld. The top UK techno trio were playing support last Friday to Icelandic singer Bjork, but their task was not to warm up the crowd for the main act, but to take them even higher after she'd finished.
Watching Underworld at work is like watching three mad chefs cook up a crazy menu of beats, samples and sequences, and while Rick Smith and Darren Emerson worked feverishly around the decks and digitals, Karl Hyde danced madly across the stage, nipping large invisible pancakes over his head. Hyde is the high llama of the loaded generation and he leads the lads down the terraces of techno with pure, unbridled enthusiasm. He's the loose cannon fodder in this three way equation, putting himself - in the firing line at the front of stage and climbing down into, the trenches to mix with the blokes and the babes in the audience.
Not that the other two are mere Jekylls against Mr Hyde's manic persona. Both Smith and Emerson may look absorbed in their work, but they're busy concocting some seriously unhinged sounds, trying hard to short circuit a few synapses have recently entered the strange world of the singles charts, and, like it or not, they now have one tune in their repertoire which is doomed to stick out like a sore thumb. Born Slippy is the trainspotting anthem in question, and when the first flurry of tribal beats begins to emanate from the big speakers the crowd reaction whirls back like a tornado. Emerson and Smith exchange a "we've created a monster" look, then smile at the gargantuan irony of it all; Hyde goes hell for leather on vocals as the lager fuelled lyrics get the crowd into a nice lather. Mega wipeout.
