Drift is the ongoing music-and-video experiment by the British electronic music group Underworld, launched on 1 November 2018,^[1][2] with consecutive tracks and music videos having been released online, on a weekly basis.^[3] Individual new tracks were made available through the band's official website, as time-limited free downloads, along with accompanying videos published on YouTube — followed by collective "episodes" released as digital EPs on music streaming platforms. Throughout the first year of Drift, 38 new tracks were released within five Episodes and an additional soundtrack album.^[4] It is the band's second project distributed digitally, after the 2005–2006 series Riverrun.

Underworld planned to conclude Drift after its 52-week run with a collective album, but decided to continue the project for another year.^[5] On 1 November 2019, an album Drift Series 1, compiling all EPs and featuring additional 11 new tracks, was released as a 7-CD, 1 Blu-ray box set, as well as digitally, along with a single-disc Drift Series 1 Sampler Edition. In September 2020, Drift Series 1 was re-released, with additional eighth CD with a live performance.^[6]

Karl Hyde and Rick Smith's aim was to release new and previously unreleased music, film, and written stories throughout a full year, on a weekly basis, every Thursday, "and see where the journey took them."^[7] They admitted that the episodic idea for the project "grew out of boredom,"^[8] jokingly adding later in the project it was "a foolhardy promise made in public."^[9] The duo wanted to disrupt the single-album-tour cycle, which for them repeats roughly every three years, by letting themselves to create instinctively and responsively, explaining "you want every day to be a challenge, particularly when it comes to making music." "Whether it's good or bad, we'll record with more honesty in this one year than we have in the previous fifteen... I mean, come on! We’ve got to try that."^[8]

Drift has its roots in earlier online Underworld projects, including the archive music released freely through underworldlive.com starting in 2000,^[10] the Riverrun project in 2005, and the band's live webcasts from 2004 to 2008. In April 2018, Underworld released by surprise their first new track since 2016's Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future, "Brilliant Yes That Would Be",^[11] and in June 2018 an unfinished version of "Appleshine",^[12] each with a video directed by Underworld's art director Simon Taylor, of the band's own design-and-film collective Tomato. These releases foreshadowed the project and were later included in Drift releases.

The duo initiated Drift having been inspired by a conversation with the band's lighting designer Haydn Cruickshank, who has been a drift racer. The project's name also referenced the movie series The Fast And The Furious, particularly one of its sequels, Tokyo Drift^[9] (although, the theme of the drifting motorsport was already present in the band's 2010 video for "Scribble"). Drift's first video to "Another Silent Way" featured racing at the Rockingham Motor Speedway.^[13] The majority of Drift music videos was directed by Taylor, shot "from Shibuya Crossing to the Moroccan desert to rural Essex."^[7] At times, the videos were said to be delivered twenty four hours before they went live.^[9] Other contributions to the project included works of playwrights, DJs, painters, and poets. The first trailer for the project's Episode 1 was published on 25 October 2018.^[14]

Compositions of the first year of Drift feature collaborations with the Australian experimental jazz band The Necks, London producer Ø [Phase] aka Ashley Burchett,^[15] actor Matthew Trevannion,^[16] members of the rock band Black Country, New Road (including Georgia Ellery, Lewis Evans,^[17] and Karl Hyde's daughter Tyler Hyde^[18]), as well as Ichirou Agata of the Japanese noise rock band Melt-Banana.^[19]

Reflecting on the project, the band described the scale of Drift as "the most inspiring process that [they've] ever engaged in"^[20] yet relentless — "There's no expansion space... you can't get ill. You can't go on holiday. You don't have weekends" — and regretted how the rapid schedule made collaborating with other artists difficult, desiring to build more time into a second series.^[21]

More information Aggregate scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	8.2/10[25]
Metacritic	86/100[26]
Review scores
Source	Rating
The Arts Desk	[27]
Clash	9/10[28]
Mixmag	9/10[29]
The Music	[30]
Mojo	[31]
PopMatters	9/10[32]
Q	[33]
The Scotsman	[34]
Uncut	8/10[35]
Under the Radar	8/10[36]

Close

Drift Series 1 is the tenth studio album by the British electronic group Underworld, released on 1 November 2019. It is the conclusion of the first year of the band's year-long music-and-video experiment Drift, and the band's first full-length release since 2016's album Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future.^[37]

The band planned to conclude the project after its 52-week run, posting on 21 May 2019 details about the new album Drift Songs, as a single-CD, double vinyl, and a 6-CD, 1-Blu-ray box set. But with the release of the last song of Episode 5, on 12 September 2019, Underworld announced the Drift project would continue on for another year. The now-renamed Drift Series 1, was released exactly one year after the launch of the series, as a box set featuring 7 CDs, a Blu-ray, and an 80-page book documenting the creative process around Drift.^[7]

A single-disc Drift Series 1 Sampler Edition was also released simultaneously, the Sampler Edition is a continuous mix of select songs from the series, many edited into shorter versions.^[7]

The full edition of Drift Series 1 features the expanded and reproduced tracks, videos and written text released throughout the series, and material the duo worked on but wasn't releasing before and during the Drift project.^[38][9] Each episode is presented across 5 separate CDs with some slight changes — Episode 1 was unmixed and reverted to its original release order, "Soniamode" was replaced with the Aditya Game version, all three collaborations with The Necks were moved to their own CD, and additional unreleased songs were added to the end of every episode. The seventh CD includes the Sampler Edition of the album.

With the September 2020 re-release of Drift Series 1, the set will contain an additional CD with the live-set RicksDubbedOutDriftExperience, recorded in at Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on 23 November 2019.^[39]

In July 2017, Underworld recorded music for the live installation Manchester Street Poem at the Manchester International Festival. The project told stories of people in Manchester who find themselves homeless.^[58] On 13 June 2019, the complete score to the project was made available to download, with proceeds going toward the ongoing Manchester Street Poem project, dedicated to people who experienced homelessness.^[18][59] The album was promoted by the single "Doris," which was released on Drift Episode 4 on the same day as the full score.^{[citation needed]}

The following is a chronological list of tracks released subsequently as digital Drift EPs. Track lengths adapted from music streaming platforms.