Last September, the duo returned with their eighth studio album, “Barking,” featuring contributions from Dubfire, Mark Knight & D. Ramirez, Appleblim & Al Tourettes and Paul van Dyk, which provided further proof that Dr. Smith and Mr. Hyde are unstoppable. Underworld is simply one of the most important groups in the history of electronic music. Influential, personal, as successful as they are extravagant, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have broken all possible moulds. Founded in the Welsh city of Cardiff in the mid-eighties, Underworld quickly scaled the heights of the indie charts thanks to an unusual approach which was based on their fondness for the synthetic sounds of Kraftwerk and took in all types of musical styles, ranging from rock to the music of Jamaica. Expert producers, studio wizards and ready to revolutionise the dancefloor with a recipe that at the time was completely unprecedented, Underworld added lyrics to their upbeat hypnotic electronica anthems which like a whirlpool, included a thousand and one sounds in a dense danceable collage conceived with DJ Darren Emerson, who was a member of the group until 2000. The frenetic “Born Slippy” and the soundtrack to “Trainspotting” shot them to stardom amidst press acclaim and stratospheric sales figures. Underworld are enshrined as one of the major groups of contemporary pop music, able to fill stadia, produce soundtracks for Hollywood's leading directors and design games for Playstation, and have never stopped carving out their own niche. Their fans already know what to expect from their show at Sónar: spectacular audiovisuals and tonnes of energy.

http://www.underworldlive.com