Uruguay must do some pretty strange things to its tourists. For not too long after Darren Emerson went down there to record his two-CD mix for the Global Underground series, this affable young, urban, house expert quit electronica’s favorite trio, Underworld. So perhaps it was this brief, fleeting taste of freedom and fun that left him longing for the allure of travel and the worldwide club circuit.

“I thought, ‘Well, in January, in England, it’s very cold,’ And the thought of going to Uruguay for a week really appealed to me,” says Emerson, now back in his home in Romford. “I had a really good time down there. The place is so well-kept – beautiful beaches, beautiful women, beautiful weather.”

Soon after compiling the CD’s tracks from his Uruguay set, Emerson turned in his badge. Emerson readily acknowledges the help former Underworld colleague Rick Smith gave him in the studio, and, of course, notes the pointers he, as a well-seasoned young DJ, gave Smith and vocalist Karl Hyde when they first approached him in the early ’90s about remaking Underworld into a rock-techno superpower. But he also points out the 10-year age gap between himself, now 29, and the rest of Underworld, and declares that it’s time to move on.

“Ten years [in Underworld] has been a long time,” says Emerson. “I just want to move on and do some stuff on my own. And it was just getting to a stage where I wasn’t enjoying it so much now. They were just very different, and I just wanna go do something that I really enjoy doing now.”

These days, Emerson reports finishing up a track with progressive house superstar Sasha, working on his own label, Underwater, and buying software programs like Virus for his home studio. “I’ve got things like a lot of Roland stuff, Jupiter 8s and Juno 106s and 909s, the usual stuff, the Nord Leads, an old Oberheim 4-Voice, old analog stuff,” says Emerson of his studio. “But I’m sort of twisting them about a bit in the computer. It’s definitely going that way. You don’t have to have a big, big studio now, as long as you’ve got a lot of memory in your computer and the right stuff, you can buy synthesizers on software. And I think that’s the way forward. It’s still nice to have the keyboard sound. You definitely need to have your keyboards, but it’s to sort of mix them up a bit.”

Currently, when he plays out – still supporting Global Underground – Uruguay (Studio K7) – Emerson will bring a Pioneer CD player to mix in new tracks he’s burned on to CD-R. He is hoping to integrate an Akai sampler into his mixers so that he can sample and reintegrate altered portions of his set back into the mix. He’s still loyal to vinyl, of course – he declares ultimately that “it’s still analog for me!” But he ultimately likes to keep his options open, particularly with mixers.

“I prefer to mix, not just with the crossfaders, but the faders going up as well, so you can cut more and scratch more,” he says. “I’m not heavily into scratching these days, but at least you’ve got that if you want that. For me, UREIs a bit too smooth and it’s hard to cut things in.”

When he heads for the club, Emerson says that two boxes – one for house, another for funky techno – are crucial to his sets. As a world traveler, Emerson insists there’s no glaring difference between dance music audiences in any country. For Emerson, it’s more about how many people you’re playing for, rather than whom you’re playing for.

“If it’s a bigger place, you usually are a bit tougher,” he says of his musical approach. “If it’s a smaller place, you’re sort of right in with the crowd. You can twist it and go in a little bit deeper and just mess about a bit, really. But I like to just sort of trial and error. I don’t usually go out and say, ‘Tonight I’m going to play banging techno or tonight, I’m going to play deep-house music.’ I have to take everything with me and see how it is in the night.”

– Justin Hampton