Underworld - Crocodile
[UnderworldLive]

Like Halley's Comet or the basketball in Castaway, Underworld are an entity whose time in the wilderness has done them a noticeable power of good. Since taking home the carriage clock on their V2 commitment, Rick Smith and Karl Hyde have kept themselves busy with film scores, graphic design projects and a download-only trio of half hour studio sets that wagged the tails of those on the scent for a comeback proper.

And here it is: released exclusively on the physical incarnation of their UnderworldLive domain as a taster for October's Oblivion With Bells LP and currently pulling in the squabblers hungry for an authentic eBay promo, Crocodile is a seven-minute mile of pure electronic athleticism, snappy enough to take chunks out of Roger Moore's eyebrow as he does his well-heeled mad-dash across a scaly deathtrap.

Opening with a whirlwind of dazzling kaleidoscopes and some skittlish percussive licks, the track initially exhibits the same carnivalesque rapture as 2002's A Hundred Days Off. However, there's a more murky peal to proceedings here, with the bass pattern in particular oozing a reptilian snarl that fair matches the toothy predator of the title. Hyde's vocodored newspeak remains as cryptically nocturnal as always, Frankensteined together from fag-pack jotted autoprose and bits of earwigged dialogue, and the harmonic ozone of his 'All these things/In me/In me' mantra sits well with the coasting synths and computerised birdsong.

For an act whose shadow in the limelight once accidentally helped sell a lot of pints of Wife Beater, Crocodile is as welcomed and refreshing as a glass of fizzy morning minerals, and mark's the certified reinstation of a best-kept national treasure.

Available 12.09.07 on Japanese import (Traffic TRCP13)