Underworld announce their eleventh album, ‘Strawberry
Hotel’, released via Virgin Music Group.
 
Here, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lines
while scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produce
ghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead,
removed from the overheard; words borrowed from the
ether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimes
reappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side to
side. Each track a very different room - some
soundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drum
and robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer of
melody and euphoric noise - and each room unmistakably,
uniquely Underworld. The only advice from Underworld’s
Rick Smith and Karl Hyde upon entering: “Please don’t
shuffle.”
 
‘Strawberry Hotel’ features the singles ‘and the colour red’
and ‘denver luna’, as well as ‘Black Poppies’, a celestial
love song, a hymn to the universe and to boundless,
positive change. Ambient and beatless, ‘Black Poppies’ is
a celebration of full dancefloors and the beauty of life itself.
 
‘Strawberry Hotel’, their first since 2019’s epic,
experimental ‘Drift’ project, where the band recorded,
mixed and released new music every week for a year.