If Dubnobasswithmyheadman captured the thrill of a generation hurtling into the digital age, Strawberry Hotel feels like a half-hearted remix, stumbling to find its footing in a world it once helped define.

Where some idealise the convenience of artificial intelligence (AI), others bang the drum of its uncertainty. This uncertainty throws us into a guessing game of ‘what if’s’: What if AI impinges the ‘purity’ of human, error-riddled art? What if it threatens ‘experimentality’? Underworld’s eleventh studio album, Strawberry Hotel, has spawned these ponderings, leaving one to question how legends of the craft could produce an album at a time like this and has it been so lacklustre?

Of course, AI and Underworld are a far cry from parallels; it’s merely the concept of lacklustre that thrusts the imagination to how gung-ho and resourceful we must be to thrive (if not survive) as contemporary artists. Much quicker, how savvy we must be to get ahead while AI is still somewhat of a chihuahua nipping at our heels. Inspiration, feeling and human emotion are where we still arguably have some currency, so it’s a shame that Underworld’s Karl Hyde and Rick Smith failed to channel these qualities in their latest work. A longtime fan must confront the difficult choice of prioritising merit over sentiment, a reality that no fan should have to face.

American art critic Jerry Saltz says that art, much like music, is a reflection of culture, a perspective no less reflected in Underworld’s revered 1994 album, Dubnobasswithmyheadman. The album laid bare a Joycean fever dream of the modern city: drunken escapades at Liverpool Street Station, the birth of the Web and the surreal visions of a post-Thatcher England. It captured the urban sprawl and the Irvine Walsh-esque visions of decay, all morphing into the 24-hour society of a new millennium. The sounds of the album alluded to the foreboding word clouds and data haze that would come to define the internet age. Dubnobasswithmyheadman was the era’s soundtrack, along with Second Toughest in the Infants and the notorious ‘Born Slippy’ of Trainspotting, all of which emulated the decrepit city-slicker flaneur, feelings of anticipation and an underground hedonism and a generation of ravers’ spiritual search amidst a looming digital age.

Underworld's sound, with its long, drawn-out arrangements, expansive themes, and multi-act structures, has been a cultural staple since the 1990s, marking the transition from techno to progressive music. The context in which Underworld once thrived has clearly changed, as have its politics and the way we use technology to produce art and to interpret our micro and macro environments. Once Underworld sang their anthems to a generation awestruck by the emergence of the internet, they now find themselves under its control.

The album is split into two parts. The first, a nostalgia trip for the faithful fanbase; the second, a gruelling exercise in excess. The first’s disillusionment proves that the duo lacks the grace of growing old as much as there could be some ounce of their legacy left in rehashing former glory. The sounds are over-synthesised and muddled, pastiche and artificial; its euphoric moments come across as cloying and overwrought, straining for something it can’t quite reach. 

Ironically, Underworld is known for their ability to conjure unadulterated euphoria. In Strawberry Hotel ‘denver luna’, ‘Techno Shinkansen’, ‘Sweet Lands Experience’ and ‘Hilo Sky’ are but some of the duo’s attempts to represent these sonic and emotional qualities, but instead the songs lean on tired themes, and one can hear the faint echo of Underworld’s former energies. Perhaps this is all but a reminder that music is little to nothing without the cultural underpinnings that give it life.

The fourth track, ‘and the colour red’, offers a break from the album’s overall saccharine and kitschy tone and contrasts with the opener, ‘Black Poppies’. In ‘Black Poppies’, the repetition of the painstakingly earnest chant “You are beautiful, you are beautiful...” comes off more like a yummy-mummy mantra than anything with meaningful or euphoric impact. In 'and the colour red', Underworld subverts expectations. With lyrics such as "My eyes go crazy" and "Dark, charge/No, no, no," bolstered by minimalist basslines and jittery energy, they exchange euphoria for unease, symbolising the encroaching dread of an increasingly unstable world. Despite being a solid techno track, it fails to break new ground. If the sentiments of ‘Black Poppies’ are better left as a hallmark quote brandished on mum’s coffee-stained mug tucked at the back of the kitchen cabinet, then ‘and the colour red’ is the weird, slightly too-agitated cousin at the family reunion—anxious, but not enough to be interesting.

‘Ottavia’ stands out for its intriguing and unexpected move in the band’s catalogue—a spoken word tragi-comedy by Smith’s daughter, mezzo-soprano Esme Bronwen-Smith, who recites a translation of Monteverdi’s ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’. While we can over-intellectualise ‘Ottavia’, both as a nod to the past and for its translation of Monteverdi, the track ‘Lewis in Pomona’ stands out as an emblem of the future. It helps to position the album in the new millennium as the duo explore new ‘cyberpunk-esque’ flavours. But alas, the stuffy production makes ‘Lewis in Pomona’ feel confused and overcrowded, sticking its head on yet another spike.

Is it fair to compare the seismic cultural impact and extraordinary circumstances of an album like Dubnobasswithmyheadman to the tepid nature of Strawberry Hotel? Absolutely. Art exists in context, as Saltz also says: “All art is political and is a reflection of the current era.” Before now, Underworld has consistently proven their ability to adapt and push boundaries, from the revolutionary Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Second Toughest in the Infants to the innovative, audiovisual Drift series (2019), where the duo broke the single-album-tour cycle with instinctive, weekly releases.

Relevance demands accountability, meaning Underworld must rise to their own standard, ensuring their artistic output is distinctive in a modern music market that is becoming more and more technologically driven and oversaturated. Mediocrity and soullessness—both the pinnacle of artistic betrayal—have seeped into their latest offering, and that’s something no one should say lightly, given their discography.

Music production is nothing short of complex, a sentiment echoed by notorious Chicago electronic music producer Theo Parrish. He grapples with the idea of techno as an artistic output that symbolises the marriage between the auto-manufacturer-worker (the artist) and the industrial-type machinery with which they operate. 

Parrish makes a distinction between the “electric” and the "digital." Digital, he explains, refers to binary code—sounds that are pulled out of the abstract, from thin air, from the data haze. Electric signals, on the other hand, are made with analogue gear; the sounds can be affected as the machine heats up, giving music a tactile quality. Analogue production can be pushed and tested, giving songs a specific, palpable texture. 

Underworld’s older tracks leant into that raw analogue charm, which Parrish discerns. The drums in Underworld’s ‘Surfboy’, for example, demonstrate a song with real character—crunchy and full of grit, the drum machine crackles from the heat of the mixing console, making it messy, textured and alive. It’s not to say that Underworld haven’t used analogue equipment for Strawberry Hotel, because they certainly have; something just feels... different. The tracks lack that humanness and modesty the duo have so eloquently been able to capture in the past.

Yes, Underworld’s old music and Strawberry Hotel exist in two completely different cultural, geopolitical and technological landscapes. But the standard remains the same: compelling, forward-thinking artistry. To borrow once again from Saltz, “If you’re going to fail, at least fail flamboyantly, not in a mediocre way.” And that’s not to say that the album is a failure; it’s merely sufficient, but therein lies its own treachery: Strawberry Hotel is a hat thrown in the wrong ring. Had the album been trimmed to a six-track EP, cutting the fluff of the other forgettable seven tracks, it might have had more success. But instead, the album as it currently stands lacks depth, cohesiveness and thought, as if spat out by an AI bot as the algorithm’s lukewarm output post an uncomfortable digestion.

This is an album for the Boomers and Gen Xers devoted to Underworld’s fanfare. The duo's cautious approach, relying on their legacy and cult following, may cause them to fade into obscurity. If they hope to stay relevant and adapt to the rapidly evolving music landscape that lies ahead, their music must be built to last—it cannot be a ‘once-was’ claim to fame peddled by the nostalgia of die-hard fans.

We are living in a time where the gap between art and technology is getting smaller, putting pressure on artists to remain culturally astute. AI has a tendency to simplify things to the most basic level. It’s great at mimicking other styles, but its fatal flaw lies in its struggle to create something original. Placing Underworld and AI on parallel tracks might then be useful, for Underworld seems to have stuck too closely to what they know instead of carving out something fresh, offering comfort instead of confrontation. 

If Dubnobasswithmyheadman was the prophetic anthem of a dawning digital age, then Strawberry Hotel is a fading postcard from the past—pretty, familiar, but ultimately disconnected from the now.