RS: Another thing that excites me about your work, your videos are always very creative, very striking. Are there any stories behind the videos for “Push Upstairs” or “King of Snake?”
Karl: “Push Upstairs,” that was made by Graham Wood, you know, one of our long-time collaborators at Tomato, who has done most of the videos that Underworld’s put out. And at that point we’d become kind of bankable and programmable by music television, so he had pressure on him to make something that was television-friendly, you know, that had a look, and yet retained some integrity. So we spoke about it and what we wanted to do is we wanted to be filmed playing live in the landscape, you know, so we thought let’s go to Scotland and do it up in the mountains, and we’d take cameras up there and we’d take a mobile recording studio and we’d build a stage up there and we’d do a gig, and that would be part of the show and then we’d use the recordings for something else. And everyone said that’s ridiculous, in Scotland it’s going to be raining, it’s going to be wet, everyone’s going to be sodden, you know, and then this possibility to do the Big Day Out Tour in Australia came up and so we said fantastic, OK, let’s go down there a bit early, we’ll film it in Australia, no problem, the weather’s going to be fantastic, scenery for miles. Graham Wood went down there, found this spot up in the Blue Mountains, where on the edge on the edge of this cliff, we’d build the stage on the edge of this cliff and we’d play to hundreds of miles of beautiful landscape. Well, we woke up in the morning and it was pouring down with rain, and it was a cloudy day and you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of your face, and basically it was Scotland with Gum trees. And I have these DV films of Graham Wood in this poncho, stood on the end of this cliff looking out into the abyss, and you know, you can see, do I jump or do I try and pull this one out the bag? And I think he did a fantastic job, needless to say if it had been a sunny day, we would have been fried to a crisp.
RS: Speaking about being fried to a crisp, this relates to Trainspotting, how did you react to seeing “Born Slippy” used to eloquently in that movie?
Karl: Oh, it was a joy, it’s such a joy. We’d met (director) Danny (Boyle) before that and it was one of those things where we were reluctant to be involved in the film because, not having read Irvine Welsh’s book but having heard people’s rather one-sided description of the book as being a kind of Cannabis paradise, we were like, ‘we don’t sit comfortably with our music being associated with drugs, violence or anything like that, we don’t see dance music that way at all.’ And it was like ‘Oh my God, we’re going to be in a film about drugs and violence, I don’t think so.’ But people convinced us to go along with Danny and look at some rushes and we were blown away, it was like it was pretty clear that we’d been misled, extremely misled about this book and this film. And we thought that it was kind of, it no way glorified dug culture, quite the opposite, so we were really happy that Danny used it, and knowing Danny as we do now, he’s a man who loves music. He’s one of those rare film directors who asks for the music upfront and is listening to it while he is making the film, and he’s very, very musical in his editing, he enhances the music and the music enhances the film, which is the way it should be.
RS: So, where did the title Born Slippy come from?
Karl: It came from a greyhound, a racing dog. We’ve got a fairly well-known greyhound track here in the East of London, and sometimes we’d go down to the races and spend a night out at the dogs. And they have the most amazing names, you know, it’s like Born Slippy, Pearl’s Girl, Sappies Curry are all titles from tracks of ours and they’re all racing dogs.
RS: Did you ever think Born Slippy would become the big drinking anthem?
Karl: No, because really it was so, it was such the antithesis of that really, it was all about the horrors I’d experienced whilst being over mediated on alcohol for a lot of years. And I kind of thought if I just write out this autobiographical piece that’s horrific, you know, people will go ‘Oh, my God, Jesus, what’s that about? That’s horrible, what’s that about?’ And I’d be able to say ‘That’s about me, hows about a bit of help?’ But we came out and explained it and then Danny did what he did with the film, and I think that the whole balance was redressed and it’s fine if people want to use it as a drinking anthem, I really don’t have any problem with that now, that’s really, really fine. You know, I’ve said my bit so, you know, it’s probably domain now.
RS: As producers, you’ve been very selective with the number of mixes that you create, how do you approach a remix as opposed to an original production?
