Second Toughest in the Infants

Rock-electronic fusionists Underworld’s 1996 album is a keystone of home-listening techno that helped introduce UK rave sounds to American ears: a high-BPM opus in which quarter-hour songs flit by in the blink of an eye, guitars cascade over rippling drum machines, and Karl Hyde unspools stream-of-consciousness rants like a Beat poet perched atop the subwoofer. Whether plunging into hypnotic house (“Rowla”) or the multi-part epics that open the album, it’s progressive in the truest sense of the term—a record that bridged divides, blazed new trails, and still sounds fresh, decades later.