It's almost a blasphemy to mix down the lovely 7:35
album version of 'Dark & Long' to a mere
4:08 - it seems rushed, like they couldn't really fit in all the spacey parts.
It's a nice track, but not nearly as excellent as the long version. Speaking of
long, there seems to be a few rather lengthy remixes of the track here, but they're
so drastically remixed I'd prefer to call them new tracks instead of remixes.
(In fact, all the long remixes makes this little maxi CD single a tad longer
than the actual album.)
Most of them (new or not) are pulsating techno-trance, monotonous yet constantly
changing, almost like one big long dancey track. This is something Underworld
do better than most, and even though they're a bit sparse on the vocal side,
Mr. Hyde pops up here and there with a few of his distinctly odd lyrical lines.
I kind of wish there was a reeeally long version of 'Dark & Long' that would
incorporate all the beautiful stuff of the "poppy" album version and add some of
this more trancey stuff, but I guess doing that could be left as an exercise
to the listener (with access to a decent computer with sampling abilities and
heaps of hard drive space).
One remix (or new track, whichever you prefer) that deserves a specific
mentioning is 'Dark Train', which would not feel misplaced on the album; it's got
vocals here and there, lovely chords and a bouncy trance beat. It was later used in
the "cold turkey" scene in the movie 'Trainspotting'; a great movie that used no
less than two Underworld tracks (the other one being the hugely successful
Born Slippy).
