Underworld – Bruce Lee

It's unfortunate that many reviewers here can't see Bruce Lee for what it is - one of Underworld's most interesting and unique tracks, and a very good one at that.

The Micronauts remix is banging as always, and the Cups remix is one of the best.

5/5 EP.

Underworld's Bruce Lee isn't much of a tune, from any angle really. Another reviewer, anType, said it was one of Underworld's most mediocre pieces... well, no. It's not even so much as to call it a proper track. Might as well bang your head into a wall and call that music. Oh well...

The Micronauts "remix" of the tune is somewhat more resembling music. The citation marks in place, seeing as the original doesn't really have a lot to remix. In the right mood, it's a little intresting, if dark and monotonous in parts. Hard to describe, which in itself may be a plus for fans of quirky/experimental stuff.

Cups (Salt City Orchestra's Vertical Bacon Vocal) can probably be considered the beef of the release. If you were expecting good things of this single as a whole, then it will certainly get some extra "saviour points" as the only thing to be called music. It's a good piece. If you compare it to the oricinal Cups instead of other tracks here, then it may seem less impressive, but it's still a good version of a good track - even an improvement over the original.

I can't get my head around the odd Dobropet version... Another non-musical track, but looking at FLuViRuS's review, you might be able to get a kind of positive experience out of it, dunno.

This would be a 1/4 with respect to the tracks, but scaling to a five star rating I give it 2/5.

Who exactly is behind the Salt City Orchestra's Vertical Bacon Vocal)?

Underworld - Cups (Salt City Orchestra's Vertical Bacon Vocal) is a beautiful slice of soft, warm, mellow, blissed out deep house, it is simply sublime and one of their best productions. Like all the best tunes it defies silly sub-genre categorisation and was/is still played by Deep House, Tech House and prog house DJs alike. :)
Bruce Lee is very brave, noisy and energetic but it's too far over my head.

This quirky Bruce Lee single is bloody interesting (pun). Released in 1999, it's still as challenging a listen today, as it was then. Salt City Orchestra's spin on Cups is deep house, disco, ambience, all squeezed into an ultraviolet track that soars cooly on a higher plane and, as the vocals remind us, 'over the ocean'. The Micronauts turn the rather unattractive original Bruce Lee into a punchy, aggressive, mean, fighting machine. Throbbing bass accompanies psychedelic mayhem. Dobropet, is one of the most understated and adventurous space of impressionistic evocation. After a short spoken introduction on head wounds, the track dips into a lengthy silence, suddenly transporting the listener back to a scene of fight, with gongs going off amidst glitchy, pulsating beats: the heart is thumping, the crowd is cheering, the glitch is disorienting like a concussion, and the gong is going off between rounds. The listener begins to feel like the wounded, dazed, confused yet resilient Bruce Lee. It's a marvel, it really is.

Underworld's BRUCE LEE EP is surely one mixed bag of mediocrity, greatness and weirdness. The title track is easily one of Underworld's most mediocre, I'm still confused as to why it was even released as a single. However, The Micronauts prove that remixing can turn anything into something great. They take Bruce Lee into a dark experimental territory and put out a menacing squelchy monster. However, the real gem here is the incredibly beautiful and heart-warming remix of Cups by Salt City Orchestra. Truly music for the soul and one of most monumental deep house tracks ever produced. Dobropet mix of Bruce Lee is just plain weird - just crowd noise over glitchy 4/4 beat.

This is the kind of releases that's very hard to rate. On one hand, I could easily give 5/5 for tracks 2 and especially 3, but tracks 1 and 4 are really not my cup of tea. So, 4/5 overall.