This year is the 25th anniversary of electronic music legends Underworld, a group that has never lost the plot for even a second, as one fine album followed another over the years. Now, the act’s singer Karl Hyde is stepping to the forefront with a solo album, Edgeland, created with Leo Abrahams (Pulp/Brian Eno). Hyde describes the highly poetic record as being about “edgelands where city meets scrub, where ragged ponies graze annexed fields and the air smells chemical.”
Today, we have the pleasure of premiering the first in a series of videos for Edgeland; stay tuned to PopMatters for the rest of Hyde’s videos over the coming months as we are premiering the entire lot.
Hyde’s first single for the new project is a dreamy, melodic number, “The Boy With the Jigsaw Puzzle Fingers”. Underworld have penned some of the best lyrics in pop music over the years, words that paint mental pictures with the fine touch of a master artist. Of course, Hyde’s solo work is no exception. Hyde tells us about the creative impulse between both the song and the video:
“The film is an extension of the journey that Edgeland takes, one inspired by the positive vibes spread by the Olympic volunteers. And it’s about remembering what it was like when Rick and I first moved to Romford — the welcome we received, the feeling of belonging to a tribe that was always positive no matter what the political, economic or natural climate; a tribe that always had an answer to every problem. The search for that energy led us to the zone where the city crumbles into fields. It’s a place that’s too often forgotten, one that rarely makes the news and never appears in travel brochures. Yet it’s somewhere that important history was made and where a rich and vibrant spirit is still alive. I felt it was time to remind myself of it.”
Edgeland releases 22 April via Universal Music Enterprises.