Underworld - Bruce Lee

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.