(Smith Hyde Productions/Virgin)The techno giants’ 11th album finds them ranging from cut-up dancefloor fillers to gentle experimentationAfter 2019’s 52-week audiovisual creative marathon, Drift, recent tunes with Irish producer Kettama and a busy touring schedule, the implacable Underworld return with a more conventional album – their 11th. Of course, Strawberry Hotel defies easy definition, veering from Born Slippy-indebted bangers to a simple closing guitar track via Ottavia – opera singer (and daughter of Rick Smith) Esme Bronwen-Smith’s delivery of a lament by Nero’s wife, set to a percolating electronic indictment.The raver’s delights are clustered towards the front. Tracks such as Techno Shinkansen (gleaming disco house, Giorgio Moroder bassline) and Sweet Lands Experience (“I was more smashed than you were,” notes Karl Hyde over more primo Smith audio tweakery) confirm the dancefloor remains in Underworld’s forebrain, 30 years since their breakthrough with genre-straddling third album Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994). Continue reading...