The last half decade or so has seen Underworld recede from public view, internet-only releases Lovely Broken Thing and Pizza For Eggs suggesting that, since the 2002 departure of Darren Emerson (the group’s DJ, remember, originally recruited in the early Nineties to provide an umbilical link to UK techno culture) this was a group with impulses turned inwards. Oblivion With Bells finds the band reforging their links to atmospheric, progressive techno, and once again, they do it way better than most. ‘Crocodile’ and ‘Holding The Moth’ twin cool, fault-free machine pulse to Karl Hyde’s gloomy, solemn vocals, like Benedictine monks chanting from the peak of Ballard’s High Rise. The rap tracks, now those I could do without: Hyde makes a game attempt at stream-of-consciousness, but the words feel exposed and the cadence muddled; but ‘To Heal’ is a beautiful bit of ambience, a synthesiser ‘Jerusalem’ for the silhouettes of skyscrapers.