At the start of November 2018, Underworld launched “DRIFT” Series 1, a year-long project that saw the band release new work each week for 52 weeks. On December 6th 2018, in close collaboration with long time Tomato partner Simon Taylor, the band released the film and audio resolution of DRIFT Episode 1: DUST.

Between November and the start of December new compositions and films were made, often reactively to the previous week’s work, and broadcast via underworldlive.com. All the Thursday releases have now been fused together into a single story told in music, film and text: DRIFT Episode 1: DUST. 

DRIFT started as a journey with no fixed destination; a very public experiment by one of the most influential electronic acts of all time. On that journey, the band’s Karl Hyde and Rick Smith stopped at a pig shed in Essex; Rockingham Speedway; a hotel room in Reykjavik; AIR studios and a series of tiny club shows in Amsterdam, Manchester and London. Each of those stop off points helped influence the creation of some of the most vital music they’ve released in years.

“DRIFT is the opposite of ‘normal’ or ‘usual practice’. A man walks a dog. The dog says hello.” Karl Hyde

DUST rises up with cyclonic techno, woozy acid bass and hypnotic calls to action, opens out with layer upon layer of splintered ambient sound topped with languid, daydream poetry and heads out into the cosmos with an elasticated groove to astrally project to. A snapshot of one month spent in Smith and Hyde’s heads, DUST is an idea gloriously exploded inside the World of Underworld.

Now presented via all major streaming/download platforms, DRIFT Episode 1: DUST features extended and developed versions of each of the Thursday releases, including collaborations with DJ and Producer Ø [Phase], Australian experimental impro-trance band The Necks and a piece made to reflect the ongoing work of the award-winning Manchester Street Poem project.