Underworld on the Makeshift Setup Behind ‘Second Toughest in the Infants’

Before Underworld became the group behind “Born Slippy .NUXX,” they recorded Second Toughest in the Infants in a spare bedroom at Rick Smith’s house in Romford. The room was roughly twelve by fourteen feet, and the repetitive beats tested his partner’s patience for months.

Speaking about the production, Smith described a deliberately minimal chain. A Soundcraft S600 desk fed an Atari ST 1040 running C-Lab Creator, synced to an Akai MG14D 12-track tape recorder via a Fostex synchroniser. Sampling was handled with a Casio FZ-1, a choice made because Smith couldn’t afford an Akai S900. The rest of the rig included an ARP 2600, an OSCar, Roland 303s and 909s, a Nord bass, a Yamaha DX7 Mk1, two Yamaha SPX90s, a Roland MT-32, and a Roland SD-3000.

All recording went to an early battery-operated Sony portable DAT. There was no hard-drive recording until the album was assembled later. “Essentially, mixes were very live, through the console, running multiple MIDI and tape tracks, with effects live in the console,” Smith said. “No plugins, no compressors, no gates… I don’t know how I did it.”

The lead single, “Pearl’s Girl,” took shape over about a month. An initial jam with Karl Hyde and Darren Emerson stalled, but Smith returned to the idea. Engineer Mike Nielson made a quick mix while Smith was mid-way through the track, a moment that helped push it forward.