Very few tracks are as instantly recognisable as Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy .NUXX’. Released in 1995 as a B-side remix and later catapulted to global fame through Danny Boyle’s 1996 film “Trainspotting”. The track is a sonic journey into the heart of the ’90s rave culture, a masterpiece that captures the complexity of human experience. Reminding listeners of the fine line that is found between Ecstasy and excess.
Original Instagram Post
Underworld – Born Slippy – ORIGINAL MIX
Karl Hyde (vocalist, Underworld): We used to go out drinking in Soho and I ended up in the Ship on Wardour Street. All the lyrics were written on that night. A drunk sees the world in fragments and I wanted to recreate that. I was inspired by Lou Reed’s New York album and Sam Shepard’s Motel Chronicles. I was into flash photography as well, so I was walking around Soho with a notebook and camera, just observing things. In those days I’d open the book whenever a musical idea inspired me. Rick [Smith] came up with a rhythm and I started singing over it. The vocals were done in one take. When I lost my place, I’d repeat the same line; that’s why it goes, “lager, lager, lager, lager”. The first time we played it live, people raised their lager cans and I was horrified because I was still deep into alcoholism. It was never meant to be a drinking anthem; it was a cry for help. Now I don’t mind. Why Born Slippy? It was a greyhound we won money on.
Underworld – Born Slippy (Nuxx) (Creative Commission version)
Trainspotting arrived in the UK like a juggernaut, ram-raiding theaters. Two years earlier, in 1994, debut director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge, producer Andrew Macdonald, and star Ewan McGregor had caused some cinematic ripples with their comic thriller Shallow Grave, but their follow-up was a revolution. With just one movie this gang seemed to singlehandedly revive the ailing British film industry—it wasn’t just alive and kicking, but screaming and shagging and pissing and puking. Trainspotting was the celluloid calling card for Cool Britannia, and it emboldened a generation.
Adapted from Irvine Welsh’s ADHD heroin odyssey of the same name, it was as sexy as it was scuzzy, brimming with as much life as death, an ode to youth, sex, friendship—and music. Inseparable from the film was its soundtrack. On screen, sound and vision were indelibly married. Renton running from the cops to Iggy Pop. Diving down a toilet to Brian Eno. Overdosing to Lou Reed. And on CD, this ultimate mixtape, rock, pop, and techno were all slammed together, all with equal prominence, which spoke to what was going on in the clubs and on the streets. In mid-90s Britain, tribes were disappearing, coming together. You didn’t have to take sides any more. Everything was open.
Of all the songs though, above and beyond all the big names, Underworld’s “Born Slippy. NUXX” soared heroically. Soundtracking the film’s climax, an adrenalin rush of freedom and betrayal, it mixed sublime synths with a four to the floor freakout, and represented everything that was going on; it was new. While making Trainspotting, Boyle had used Underworld’s album Dubnobasswithmyheadman as a sort of rhythmic guide, but randomly found this 12″ remix in a record shop, listened to it, and immediately knew he needed to end the film with it. Trainspotting, he later said, was ostensibly about heroin, but was rhythmically more like ecstasy, and “Born Slippy” provided the perfect crescendo.
Underworld’s Karl Hyde had written the lyrics after a night of heavy drinking in London’s Soho, stumbling out of The Ship pub and making his way around to Tottenham Court Road station to try to catch his night train home. The song, he has said, was a cry for help—the shouts of “lager lager lager” were self-loathing irony, and as “Born Slippy” exploded after the film’s success, he was dismayed at its appropriation as a beery drinking anthem. With time though he came to appreciate that it was making people happy. It wasn’t about him any more.
