Underworld - Strawberry Hotel - October 25th 2024

Is anybody on this forum able to change the title of this thread? Because the album is now called "Strawberry Hotel", out October 25, looking forward to it:

https://store.underworldlive.com/collections/strawberry-hotel/products/strawberry-hotel-cd

Strawberry Hotel tracklisting:

1. Black Poppies

2. denver luna

3. Techno Shinkansen

4. and the colour red

5. Sweet Lands Experience

6. Lewis In Pomona

7. Hilo Sky

8. Burst Of Laughter

9. King Of Haarlem

10. Ottavia

11. denver luna (acapella)

12. Gene Pool

13. Oh Thorn!

14. Iron Bones

15. Stick Man Test

I'm interested to see if the tracks flow into each other or there are reprised moments (like the 'Denver Luna' acapella being in there), as 16 is a lot of tracks for a group who have done a fair few lengthy tracks in their time.

Well I've been obsessed with Denver Luna recently (as well as that remix) so I'm pretty excited for this... but still cautious... Yeah 16 is a hell of a lot of tracks for an Underworld album... Maybe a lit of short interludes/ambient pieces?

Saw this on Reddit, only a couple of proper long tracks:

1 Black Poppies 2:52
2 denver luna 8:01
3 Techno Shinkansen 3:23
4 and the colour red 5:42
5 Sweet Lands Experience 4:44
6 Lewis In Pomona 5:38
7 Hilo Sky 5:04
8 Burst of Laughter 3:27
9 King of Haarlem 3:46
10 Ottavia 5:00
11 denver luna (acappella) 2:27
12 Gene Pool 9:07
13 Oh Thorn! 1:59
14 Iron Bones 4:39
15 Stick Man Test 2:35

Total length: 01:08:24

Hat tip Dirty forums.

Thanks @mcbpete

Hmm, yeah @BUNKUM , ok 15 tracks, gotta say yes, it is quite a bit of tracks for a usual UW album, from there I thought it was going to be a double album, but ok guess not. They are known to get into ambience, so hmmmmm.

The blurb on their site says "please don't shuffle" so I'm guessing this will be very heavily linked, maybe bunched together as four side-long suites for the vinyl.

How's the fishing on the Bristol Avon nowadays? C'mon Robert! Bank a big one! Those Mr Whiskers been munching hard on crayfish and shrimp. The next one will be massive! Maybe a record breaker. But you gotta be there when the river is dropping from high water, the moon phase has to be correct and low presssure sweeping in from the Atlantic. Then The Beast will bite. At midnight. 
 

Good luck!

  On 9/7/2024 at 11:08 PM, beerwolf said:

How's the fishing on the Bristol Avon nowadays? C'mon Robert! Bank a big one! Those Mr Whiskers been munching hard on crayfish and shrimp. The next one will be massive! Maybe a record breaker. But you gotta be there when the river is dropping from high water, the moon phase has to be correct and low presssure sweeping in from the Atlantic. Then The Beast will bite. At midnight. 
 

Good luck!

Karl's voice reading this over an underworld beat

Full official preview.

Had a busy day so still not got around to this. Vinyl vinyls are in the post, so I should probably give the digital vinyls a go as well.

This is really fucking good. All the variation and oddness enormous bangers of Drift but condensed into 70 minutes. Hilo Sky and Gene Pool are exceptional.

Hoooly shit, "Techno Shinkansen". I broke out in aggressive, full-body chills on that track. It's like opening a wormhole straight into my youth--all the classic Underworld timbres on display! I would have appreciated a 7-10 minute treatment in the vein of "Kittens", "Deep Arch" or "King of Snake" but this will do. 

Sorry boys, I'm gonna shuffle (and also hit skip on some tracks too)

hate teh cover

New Underworld album? Fantastic news that. Toodle pip!

  On 10/25/2024 at 2:52 PM, dr lopez said:

hate teh cover

Hate teh name

  On 10/24/2024 at 9:02 AM, dcom said:

Full official preview.

Expand  

Finally getting around to this, a lot of goodness. Like @xxx i would have been down for a good long workout of Techno Shinkansen. Just overall a lot of really fucking good techno and classic Underworld.

Nice album! Can't say I care for the last track, feels like it ends with a whimper. Maybe it'll grow on me more.

Halfway into denver luna... wow, they are intentionally parodying themselves right? Tube hole... velveteen... telephone... listing colours. What is this lol 

In those days it seemed like he would sing about anything and everything. This sounds like he has somehow actually run out of nonsense to sing about.

ueah its paint by numbers underworld

i liked gene pool tho

  On 10/25/2024 at 8:59 PM, Friendly Stranger said:

Nice album! Can't say I care for the last track, feels like it ends with a whimper. Maybe it'll grow on me more.

Yeah I have to agree, didn't particularly care for the last track, but really liked the rest of the album - more than I thought I would!

It's not leaving my rotation, which is a nice surprise!
The vocal processing on 'denver luna (acapella)' is pretty huge.
Agree about the last track. There is maybe one stinker - 'Ottavia' is a tiny bit cringey.  

It sounds like a couple of old men trying to recreate a mid-90s underworld album from memory