Thirty years on, rave veterans Underworld still own the night
Our reviewers give their verdict on the latest shows around town.
By Kate Prendergast
December 30, 2025 — 1.00pm
**MUSIC
****UNDERWORLD
****Carriageworks, December 29
****Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★★½
**
The lore of Underworld goes deep. It’s been a rich, rambling journey over four decades – featuring existential curveballs and crowning glories in clubs, stadiums, soundtracks and their massive, stasis-defying catalogue. Now celebrating 30 years of Born Slippy (Nuxx), the rave firmament Rick Smith and Karl Hyde occupy is a legacy assured.
Sixty-something titans of anti-conformist dance music, sculpting mind-warping odysseys through their ever-expanding polygenre of techno and progressive, ambient and dub, city-scavenged poetry and art-rock, they’re the result of the generation of Kraftwerk and Joy Division crashing into the UK’s acid house revolution, to pioneer their own infectious groove that is dark and long, propulsive and psychogeographic, experimental and euphoric.
Rick Smith’s vast rig took half an hour to set up. Credit: Blake Houghton
Their live shows are legendary. This one, launching Finely Tuned’s summer warehouse series at Carriageworks, may have ended a smidge early, at the rave rat’s waking hour of 10.20pm (likely a set times gaffe). But over their 80 minutes on stage, in front of a sold-out Monday crowd of old, young and all-shining faces, these two best mates gave us everything.
Hyde was up there shaking with the holy spirit of techno, our bard and puckish leader of the dance. Smith, the wizard of the machine, calmly working a rig so enormous it took half an hour to set up after opener Ross From Friends.
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Unfurling during this intermission, too, was a stage-spanning LED curtain: syncing with mega-screen visuals and a high-precision cosmic light show, adding new dimensions of colour and texture to club anthems like Two Months Off and Cowgirl, as well as their thunderously evolving extempore beats.
And the fog rolled in.
The Carriageworks bays for these events are huge, resembling an industrial cathedral: it takes a lot of smoke to fill them. But near the end, dense mist had enveloped the entire front section. This included the stage itself, with our duo disappearing completely for perhaps 10 minutes.
Through the billows, light speared; on the spine of the ceiling, shapes ran rivers. Intentional or not, the effect was surreal and not unwelcome, with punters invited to surrender completely to the sound.
Born Slippy, that blessed former B-side, sent us high into the night. What joker, though, decided to play Werewolves of London on the speakers immediately after to boot us out?
Underworld were in Australia only last year for VIVID – here’s to hoping they make another killer return in 2026.