Review
Genre and Mood
Smoke City’s Underwater Love is trip-hop with acid jazz and bossa nova in its blood, the three genres Wikipedia names for it. The feelings are in its title and in the words critics used: sultry, hypnotic and dreamy, a “sublime slice of sub-aqua sultriness” in Record Mirror’s phrase.
Song Summary
The song opens the band’s debut album Flying Away, and this is its full album version, 6:46 long. It is built on a gentle, constant guitar strum, drums and samples: rainforest noises, Luiz Bonfá’s Bahia Soul and James Brown’s Mother Popcorn. Over them Nina Miranda sings an English hook and slips into spoken Portuguese.
Musical Breakdown
No source we found times this recording, so the guide follows its elements rather than a clock.
The Guitar
The strum is the ground of the track, gentle and constant; Tom Bromley singled out the hypnotic guitar.
The Groove
Underneath runs what Bromley called a funky drum loop. The rainforest noises add a place rather than a note.
The Vocal
Miranda carries the English hook. A reviewer liked best the moments when she turns to spoken Portuguese, more than her exotic purring of the English hook.
The Album Version
At 6:46 this is the long cut. The single’s CD led with a four-minute radio edit and added remixes by Morales and Voyager.
Concepts in Focus
sampling is how the song travels. Three borrowed recordings, a bossa nova guitarist, a funk record and a rainforest, sit inside a song played and programmed in London, and Music & Media heard a blend of dub, hip hop and jazz in the result.
A radio edit trims a track for broadcast. The single of Underwater Love led with a 4:00 edit; the album keeps the full 6:46. A slow track hypnotises through repetition, so hear the long one.
The song also shows the power of a placement, the idea behind soundtrack work. Its life changed when Levi’s used it in Mermaids, an advert directed by Michel Gondry, who also directed The Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar. In 2001 another band reached the chart the same way with Pepe Deluxé – Before You Leave.
Artistic Context
Smoke City were Nina Miranda, Marc Brown and Chris Franck, a London band active from 1994 to 2002 that blended acid jazz and trip hop with samba and bossa nova and sang some lyrics in Portuguese. Miranda and Brown, former school friends, wrote the song; it was recorded in 1994, when Miranda was living in Brazil, and first released in 1995 on Ritas Records. Jive Records reissued it as a single on 31 March 1997, and Flying Away followed on Jive the same year.
Impact and Reception
The Levi’s advert made Underwater Love a number four hit in Britain, the 14th song to enter the chart through a Levi’s ad. Melody Maker made it Single of the Week, Music Week gave it five out of five and thought it was begging to be the next Bond theme, and NME praised its dub and Brazilian touches. It remains the band’s best-known song. Give it the full 6:46 and let it pull you under.
