Returning back to the kind of venues they last played twenty five years ago, this short Underworld tour (six shows, small venues, in Manchester, Amsterdam, and London’s hip Shoreditch), feels like the kind of show that actually never happened. The Village Underground is a relatively small venue, with room for 500 or so people, in what looks like a railway arch.

It’s what bands call a ‘club’ gig, complete with – if you are seeing them on the weekend – an inappropriately late end time of 2.00am. Since a 2.00am finish would result in me having to get a hotel and stay overnight on a Saturday – or perhaps, drive back until 4am – I ditch that stupid idea and make the Sunday show where the band play at 10pm, and end at 11.30pm, and where I still have to leave early or be stranded in the capital.

From a purely human, real-world, have-to-go-to-work in the morning perspective, it’s pointless to have a late gig where you don’t need to. Because some of us – i.e. me – don’t go out clubbing til 2am these days, and I don’t live in London anymore. Even if I did, a 2am cab or nightbus would cost more than the gig ticket. And there’s child-sitters, or favours from friends and grandparents to call in. Because kids don’t want to stay up until 2am in a club to see a band Daddy likes. I’ve seen parents dancing whilst their children snore in their arms with huge yellow ear protectors at gigs before : know your audience.

You can’t go back to what cannot return.

And anyway, at 12.10am in London, there’s two bands I’d like to see, both playing ‘late’ gigs, both starting past midnight, both of whom I’m not seeing. (And, yes, it’s been a staggering 15 years since I saw a Nitzer Ebb headline show solely because of this reason).

Nonetheless, and stripping aside what exists outside, is the gig any good?

Mostly. The venue is clearly oversold : it’s an L shape. And a third of the space can’t see the stage. So it’s very, very crowded. You can’t move. If you’re prepared to stand for say, an hour before stage time, and be quite crowded, and be at the far end of the venue from the bar, you can probably get a good spot. If you aren’t, then you’re going to feel the kind of crowded that happens when the train companies close a station at rush hour.

Underworld then, are not as enjoyable as they could be. They open with the rush and roar of 1996 : “Juanita – Kiteless – To Dream Of Love” is a rampaging beast of a song, all building and collapsing patterns and rhythms, snatches of vocal, where the vocals aren’t really melodies so much as punctuation, stream of consciousness words that fly where somehow it doesn’t make sense and then it does. On its own, the instrumental portions of these songs would be classic dance/electronic tracks anyway, and yet somehow, with the voices, they become bigger, better, more human, and the audience connect with them more. Maybe that’s why I love Underworld more than Orbital and The Chemical Brothers, because the voice connects. The next song is “Pearls Girl” – surprisingly I haven’t managed to see Underworld play this song live since 2003 – and it tears the roof off the venue. Well, not actually. But there’s pockets of crushed dancing, alongside some detectable tension at the crammed room, where’s no room to roam. But all things are equal now, if you can find a way to stand inside yourself and lose yourself in the music.

Things settle to predictability with “I Exhale”, first – and only track tonight – from the most recent album, Barbara, Barbara, We Face A Shining Future. There’s the new – pounding and fun Dexters Chalk which seamlessly melds into rarely played b-side (and utter banger) Cherry Pie which was last a setlist staple in 1996.

There’s another outbreak of glory with Two Months Off, then the final ‘new’ track with Another Silent Way from the Drift EP. As it goes on, I keep an eye on the time, and at smack on 11.00 there’s one of the most transcendental, powerful songs I’ve seen in a long time : There’s “Rez/Cowgirl” ; one of the best songs of all time. And, here, for the first time in twenty of so years, the original live intro is back, which is a pulsing, slow and immense set of seemingly random notes and bleeps that slowly fill themselves in, speed up, and elevate the night to the glorious hold-and-release buzz rush that practically timestamped the entire Drop The Bass genre. It almost impercetably melds into the hands-in-the-air rush of “Cowgirl”, and everything happens. The rush you’re chasing? The thing that makes all the standing and waiting, the supermarkets and the racist relatives and the job worthwhile? I find it here. In some other places too, but right here, right now, it is here, before me. As ever, chasing the perfect moment.

Juanita - Kiteless – To Dream Of Love
Pearls Girl
I Exhale
Dexters Chalk
Cherry Pie
Two Months Off
Another Silent Way
Rez
Cowgirl
Jumbo
King Of Snake
Moaner
Born Slippy / Nuxx