You could say that Underworld had a lucky escape. After all, many others have gone down the same road and discovered that it was simply a cul-de-sac. One hit tune and it's goodnight as far as Joe Public is concerned - Kajagoogoo and Too Shy, Baby Bird and Gorgeous and even the unlamented Freur and Doot Doot.
Underworld and Born Slippy could easily have gone the same way. A song which accompanied so many magic moments during the summer of 1996 and into that winter it began life as a B-side, found fresh support after popping up on the Trainspotting soundtrack and then took on a scary momentum of its own. There are few clubbers who cannot remember at least one occasion when that "shouting lager, lager, lager" chorus was in full effect when the lights went on after another champion night out.
Two and a bit years later Underworld have returned, not with 12 variations on that theme, but with one of the year's most intoxicating collections. Beaucoup Fish, their third album, is a turbo-charged screamer which takes those Underworld elements we know and love from Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Second Toughest In The Infants (sleek grooves, idiosyncratic lyrics and perfect sound-scapes) for a spin around a new part of town. There's no lager in sight and believe me, this is a good thing.
Darren Emerson explains that the pressure to repeat the giddy Born Slippy chart highs was minimal. "To be honest, it was just a piece of music that we made that wasn't supposed to go anywhere," he explains in his disarming manner. "The record company never pressurised us because they were cool about it and they're our mates. It was more the pressure you put on yourself. It's great seeing your record doing really well around the world and selling loads and people knowing your name and you think `yeah, I could do with some more of that'.
"You start thinking about compromising what you do and worrying about chart positions. You do kind of feel you should become a caricature of yourself, like `that's done well, so we'll do it again'. But then you realise there are more important things."
With Underworld, there are plenty of members of the agency whose clients have included Levis, Nike and The Guardian, while Underworld music has appeared on various Tomato TV adverts. Self-sufficiency, it seems, is the byword here.
There's even a lucrative sideline in soundtrack commissions which has seen Underworld tracks appear in Batman and A Life Less Ordinary, although Emerson is ambiguous about further adventures in celluloid. "Apart from Trainspotting, film people regard music as the shit on the bottom of the shoe," he believes. "They're not interested: it's just something they have to sort out at the end. No matter how nice they are to you and no matter how much money they give you, that's how you get treated. We put a load of effort into the track we did for Batman and then, when you watch the film, the track isn't even in there. Well, it's there, but it might as well not be. It pisses you off. So I'd rather DJ and the other two would rather go to Tomato or take photos than make music for a purpose outside of Underworld.
"We find that if we do start working on a piece of music for anything like an ad or a film and it's going well, we don't want to give it away," he laughs. "That has been a problem for us in the past because we get approached, start something, get excited, become inspired and it turns into an Underworld track."
One creative impetus behind Beaucoup Fish was the trio's desire to take a trip through techno's back pages. "With the first two albums, I think we tended to get carried away by wanting to match certain sounds. This time, we had a chance to sit back and remember what we really liked when we started out. We rediscovered certain records from our past, stuff like Giorgio Moroder, Larry Heard and all the early Detroit and Chicago producers, classic electronic music. "With Second Toughest, we were fascinated by drum'n'bass and the whole break-beat movement and the record reflected that. Now, it's 10-plus years into acid house and to be honest, we're not so worried about being right up to the minute. We don't have that urge to be fashionable or in vogue any more."
They also don't harbour any ambitions to become the new Prodigy by adding rock'n'roll make-up. "We've had pressure to cartoon the band up a bit more," admits Emerson. "People want you to be larger than life; they want you to be Marilyn Mansun. I've got no problem with other people doing that, but sometimes it's just not your style. Someone once said to me, in the context of the big glam stars of the 1970s, that we were more like Roxy Music than, say, Slade or Mud. I really like that! We're not the most outrageous people in the world; we're just into making music. Certain people don't get that - they'd prefer you to be on the front of the NME gurning and spitting beer."
It's obvious that club culture still weaves its spell for Emerson and, indeed, for Underworld. He has returned to the DJ booth lately to road-test new tracks and enjoyed the experience. "I'm quite into it again at the moment because I've got interested in different records like, say, Armand Van Helden who I really dig at the moment. A few years ago, I was DJ-ing in certain types of clubs, playing a certain sound and liking certain records on certain labels - and then I realised I didn't really like it that much and I probably wouldn't go to the clubs if I had a choice. I mean, I liked the people and the other DJs but you'd look around and think `there are no girls here'. It was all sweaty blokes" - he laughs again - "and I think I wanted more than that."
Beaucoup Fish is out now on V2 Records.
