Underworld
Second Toughest In the Infants (Remastered)
Album · Electronic · 1996
Rock-electronic fusionists Underworld’s 1996 album is a keystone of home-listening techno that helped introduce UK rave sounds to American ears: a high-BPM opus in which quarter-hour songs flit by in the blink of an eye, guitars cascade over rippling drum machines and Karl Hyde unspools stream-of-consciousness rants like a Beat poet perched atop the subwoofer. Whether plunging into hypnotic house (“Rowla”) or the multi-part epics that open the album, it’s progressive in the truest sense of the term—a record that bridged divides, blazed new trails and still sounds fresh, decades later.
Second Toughest In the Infants (Remastered)
Underworld
Rock-electronic fusionists Underworld’s 1996 album is a keystone of home-listening techno that helped introduce UK rave sounds to American ears: a high-BPM opus in which quarter-hour songs flit by in the blink of an eye, guitars cascade over rippling drum machines and Karl Hyde unspools stream-of-consciousness rants like a Beat poet perched atop the subwoofer. Whether plunging into hypnotic house (“Rowla”) or the multi-part epics that open the album, it’s progressive in the truest sense of the term—a record that bridged divides, blazed new trails and still sounds fresh, decades later.
