Josh seems to feel slightly guilty about the fact that the first "house" track he's found himself liking is an Underworld mix of a Massive Attack track. This is in relation to a discussion we'd been having about the advantages and drawbacks of "gateway" musics - tracks and artists which position themselves on the borders of stylistic divisions (in this case dance music and rock music), and usually serve as the introductory artist or tracks for listeners seeking to move from a broad understanding of one genre to an initial grasp on the other.
I was saying that I dislike the way that often within the critical discourse of rock music, artists like Underworld or Orbital are held up as examples of "superior dance music" primarily because of their conguity to a rock understanding of music, rather than because they do in fact make good dance music. Which I think they both do, or have done on occasion.
That last sentence explains why I don't have a problem with Josh liking an Underworld remix. The thing about Underworld is that despite their occasional predeliction for the meditative electro-ballad, their music tends to be deliberately, uncompromisingly dance-based. Their cache among the rock world comes solely from their use of vocals and the odd guitar, and their integrated live performances - essentially their status as a "real band" as opposed to a faceless dance collective.
This means two things - firstly that from the Underworld mixes of other artists that I've heard, I'd hardly expect that their "Risingson" remix would be in some way diluted. Indeed, the mixes I've heard have tended to be even more dancefloor-focused than their own material. Secondly, all the perceived qualities that Underworld possess in the eyes of a rock audience are meaningless in the context of a remix of someone else's work - if anything an affirmation of the meaningless of the idea of "real bands" and the sacredness of the material which they issue.
So Josh, I won't set the dogs on you, and if I hear that remix I'll try and think of other things you might like. In terms of Underworld's sound in general, if anyone liked the driving Moroder-esque sound of a lot of the tracks on Beaucoup Fish, I'd highly advise checking out Green Velvet (Cajmere's green haired alter-ego), whose music is similar (down to the paranoid mumbled monologues) but is even more compulsive and brutal.
