Barking (album)
Encyclopedia
Barking is the eighth studio album by British
electronica
group Underworld
, released on 2 September 2010. The lead single, "Scribble
", produced with Welsh
drum and bass
producer
High Contrast
, was released on 28 June 2010. The band released a radio edit of the track for free download
on their website on 13 May 2010.
Each track on the album was written by band members Karl Hyde and Rick Smith in Essex
, before being sent to producers well-known for their contributions to trance
, drum and bass
and dubstep
. The album sees further collaboration with Mark Knight and D. Ramirez
, whose 2009 single, "Downpipe", featured lyrics and vocals by Hyde.
Barking received mostly positive reviews from most music critics. The album debuted at number twenty-six on the UK Albums Chart
, selling 5,146 copies in its first week.
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
score of 67, based on 18 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Barry Walters of Spin
wrote, "with production help from High Contrast
, Dubfire
, and Paul Van Dyk
, Underworld is freed up to focus on crafting memorable tunes that hark back to their electronica heyday, as well as more personal, coherent lyrics. Earnest emotions surprisingly suit these dance-floor surrealists." BBC Music
's Sarah Bee gave the album a positive review, stating: "There's a lightness and a jollity about their music which combines with an unabashed poignancy, and there's a sense of deep contentment and peace about this album. They may not be sticking their necks out as pioneers now but it's not important – they are never less than themselves, and superficial quibbles aside this is the sound of musicians with nothing to prove and everything to give." Record Collector
reviewer Daryl Easlea said the album is "possibly Underworld’s poppiest ever [...] yet [it] retains their trademark dark heart". She concluded: "With its tremendous focus, Barking ably demonstrates that, after six albums, Underworld remain the UK’s leading old-school dance combo."
Michaelangelo Matos from The A.V. Club
described the album as "in some ways, the most tuneful Underworld album yet, which isn’t saying a lot". The NME
gave the album a mixed review, stating that the album "tends to fail when it experiments", but praised the songs "Bird 1" and "Moon in Water" for being "in the vein of classic Underworld, simultaneously danceable and menacingly strange."
Resident Advisor
reviewer Ian Mathers said the duo "marries a renewed emphasis on the dance floor with unabashedly open-hearted lyrics", and felt that "the songs here are a harmonious marriage of the classic, propulsive Underworld sound and the kind of techniques and textures that postdate most of their career." Ben Weisz of musicOMH
gave the album a favourable review, and concluded: "Barking is a mostly-solid album let down by a couple of weak links. It's not earth-shattering, and there are no new Born Slippy
s, but it's well worth a listen." Australian dance music website inthemix stated that "Barking will, as the frontman seems to suggest, take the group to a new audience – or realign them with the heady days of Born Slippy". Stephen Lussier of The Spill Magazine comments, "The album’s core echoes of a time when careful attention was taken in connecting electronica and vocal expression, thus making this an unquestionably more lyrically-driven album." A reviewer from Music Week
felt that the album "is less of a return to form then a continuation of what has come before, from the euphoric dance floor fillers of Between The Stars and Always Loved A Film to the gentle raw piano off closing track Louisiana with the end result reeking in nostalgia of the duo’s mid-90s heyday."
In his review for Drowned in Sound
, Alex Barker wrote: "This record can be seen as a work of celebration [...] while residing in the comforting notion that they have already proven all that they have to prove. Or it could be considered a somewhat lazy effort, a work more poppy than anything they have previously produced and one in which they know will sell well."
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
group Underworld
Underworld (band)
Underworld are a British electronic group, and principal name under which duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have recorded together since 1980.- Early years: 1979–1986 :...
, released on 2 September 2010. The lead single, "Scribble
Scribble (song)
"Scribble" is a song by electronic group Underworld. It was released as the first single from their album Barking. The track, co-produced by High Contrast, was released as a digital single on 28 June 2010.-Music video:...
", produced with Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
drum and bass
Drum and bass
Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
High Contrast
High Contrast
Lincoln Barrett, better known by the stage name High Contrast , is a Welsh drum and bass DJ and producer.-History:...
, was released on 28 June 2010. The band released a radio edit of the track for free download
Music download
A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...
on their website on 13 May 2010.
Each track on the album was written by band members Karl Hyde and Rick Smith in Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, before being sent to producers well-known for their contributions to trance
Trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
, drum and bass
Drum and bass
Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
and dubstep
Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in south London, England. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals"....
. The album sees further collaboration with Mark Knight and D. Ramirez
D. Ramirez
D. Ramirez is an English house producer and DJ. He has used a variety of pseudonyms including The Lisa Marie Experience , Cordial, Finger Fest and Rambo...
, whose 2009 single, "Downpipe", featured lyrics and vocals by Hyde.
Barking received mostly positive reviews from most music critics. The album debuted at number twenty-six on the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
, selling 5,146 copies in its first week.
Critical reception
Barking received mostly positive reviews from most music critics. At MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 67, based on 18 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Barry Walters of Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
wrote, "with production help from High Contrast
High Contrast
Lincoln Barrett, better known by the stage name High Contrast , is a Welsh drum and bass DJ and producer.-History:...
, Dubfire
Dubfire
Ali Shirazinia, commonly known by his stage name Dubfire, is an Iranian American house and techno DJ and producer. Prior to his solo career, Dubfire was one-half of the four-time nominated and Grammy Award-winning duo Deep Dish...
, and Paul Van Dyk
Paul van Dyk
Matthias Paul, better known by his stage name Paul van Dyk is a German Grammy Award-winning Electronic Dance Music DJ, musician and record producer...
, Underworld is freed up to focus on crafting memorable tunes that hark back to their electronica heyday, as well as more personal, coherent lyrics. Earnest emotions surprisingly suit these dance-floor surrealists." BBC Music
BBC Music
BBC Music is a team working in the department of Audio and Music Interactive at the BBC. Responsible for the BBC Music website - the portal site to music content across the BBC website....
's Sarah Bee gave the album a positive review, stating: "There's a lightness and a jollity about their music which combines with an unabashed poignancy, and there's a sense of deep contentment and peace about this album. They may not be sticking their necks out as pioneers now but it's not important – they are never less than themselves, and superficial quibbles aside this is the sound of musicians with nothing to prove and everything to give." Record Collector
Record Collector
Record Collector is the United Kingdom's longest-running monthly music magazine. It distributes both within the UK and worldwide. It started in 1979.-The early years:...
reviewer Daryl Easlea said the album is "possibly Underworld’s poppiest ever [...] yet [it] retains their trademark dark heart". She concluded: "With its tremendous focus, Barking ably demonstrates that, after six albums, Underworld remain the UK’s leading old-school dance combo."
Michaelangelo Matos from The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
described the album as "in some ways, the most tuneful Underworld album yet, which isn’t saying a lot". The NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
gave the album a mixed review, stating that the album "tends to fail when it experiments", but praised the songs "Bird 1" and "Moon in Water" for being "in the vein of classic Underworld, simultaneously danceable and menacingly strange."
Resident Advisor
Resident Advisor
Resident Advisor is an online electronic music magazine dedicated to the global dance music scene. The website won a People's Voice award in the 12th Annual Webby Awards in 2008.-Site History:...
reviewer Ian Mathers said the duo "marries a renewed emphasis on the dance floor with unabashedly open-hearted lyrics", and felt that "the songs here are a harmonious marriage of the classic, propulsive Underworld sound and the kind of techniques and textures that postdate most of their career." Ben Weisz of musicOMH
MusicOMH
musicOMH is a United Kingdom-based website which publishes independent reviews, featues and interviews from across all musical genres including classical, metal, rock and R&B.-History:...
gave the album a favourable review, and concluded: "Barking is a mostly-solid album let down by a couple of weak links. It's not earth-shattering, and there are no new Born Slippy
Born Slippy .NUXX
"Born Slippy .NUXX" is a 1996 single by the band Underworld.It was preceded in January 1995 by the single "Born Slippy", which featured the ".NUXX" mix as a B-side. The band has stated that the pounding, relentless rhythm and shouted lyrics of the track were originally meant "as a joke", and the...
s, but it's well worth a listen." Australian dance music website inthemix stated that "Barking will, as the frontman seems to suggest, take the group to a new audience – or realign them with the heady days of Born Slippy". Stephen Lussier of The Spill Magazine comments, "The album’s core echoes of a time when careful attention was taken in connecting electronica and vocal expression, thus making this an unquestionably more lyrically-driven album." A reviewer from Music Week
Music Week
Music Week is a trade paper for the UK record industry.Founded in 1959 as Record Retailer, it was relaunched on 18 March 1972 as Music Week . On 17 January 1981 the title was again changed, owing to the increasing importance of sell-through videos, to Music & Video Week...
felt that the album "is less of a return to form then a continuation of what has come before, from the euphoric dance floor fillers of Between The Stars and Always Loved A Film to the gentle raw piano off closing track Louisiana with the end result reeking in nostalgia of the duo’s mid-90s heyday."
In his review for Drowned in Sound
Drowned in Sound
DrownedinSound.com or DiS is a UK based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway . The site is an editorially independent music website.-History:...
, Alex Barker wrote: "This record can be seen as a work of celebration [...] while residing in the comforting notion that they have already proven all that they have to prove. Or it could be considered a somewhat lazy effort, a work more poppy than anything they have previously produced and one in which they know will sell well."
Standard edition
Deluxe Edition
Limited Edition
Formats
- Standard edition – CD jewel case edition containing 9 tracks with an 8-page roll-fold booklet.
- Deluxe Edition – CD and DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in a 3-panel cardboard packaging with 8-page roll-fold booklet, containing 9 tracks and a DVD with music videos for each track. - Limited Edition – Box set containing book pack of 32-page artwork and the 9 track CD, an additional CD with alternate versions and a DVD with music videos for each track including two not present on the Deluxe Edition.
Charts
| Chart (2010) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
46 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts... (Flanders) |
26 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts... (Wallonia) |
29 |
| Dutch Albums Chart MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... |
27 |
| European Albums Chart | 49 |
| German Albums Chart Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie... |
73 |
| Irish Albums Chart Irish Albums Chart The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically... |
36 |
| Swiss Albums Chart Swiss Music Charts The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75... |
60 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
26 |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
151 |
| US Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Dance/Electronic Albums |
6 |
| US Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Independent Albums Independent Albums The Billboard Independent Albums is a chart of the highest-selling independent music albums and extended plays in the United States, compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is used to list artists who are not signed to major labels... |
33 |
Release history
| Region | Date | Label | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan Japan Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south... |
2 September 2010 | Traffic Inc. | CD Compact Disc The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,... , digital download Music download A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment... |
| Europe Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting... |
13 September 2010 | Cooking Vinyl Cooking Vinyl Cooking Vinyl is a UK-based independent record company, founded in 1986. Its original orientation was toward contemporary folk music—notably Billy Bragg, and Michelle Shocked's Texas Campfire Tapes, recorded on a Sony Walkman, one of its first releases... |
|
| United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... |
September 14, 2010 | Om Records Om Records Om Records is a US-based record label, established in 1995, which releases electronic music, dance music, and hip hop. The label was founded in San Francisco in 1995 by Chris Smith. Om Records releases both artist albums and various compilations. Some of the most notable compilations include Om... |