Underworld and Volkswagen cut into Girl Talk's action with new app

It’s the stone-cold truth that one thing, and one thing only, makes driving tolerable, and that’s music. The most important part of any road trip isn’t the full tank of gas, the HoMedics Ortho Therapy lumbar Cushion support pillow with velour cover, or the fresh soft-pack of Marlboro Light. No, what’s really important is the iPod playlist that you’ve spent hours meticulously assembling for your Vancouver-to-Miami cross-continent haul.

Think about how many behind-the-wheel memories you have burned into your brain, and the songs that are part of them.
Like driving to Surrey for the first time with “Highway to Hell” rattling the doors you’d dutifully locked. Or barrelling through East Vancouver while cranking Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto”. Or that time you rode the stick shift like was Peter North while ripping down the backroads of Chilliwack after “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” got you all hot and bothered.

Music and driving go together like, well, driving in Vancouver and explosive road rage triggered by the fact that no one in this fucking city seems to understand that the fucking speed limit is 50 fucking kilometres per hour, not 32.

Having obviously realized this, Volkswagen and electronica pioneers Underworld have teamed up to create a new app that responds to a car’s movements.

The Play The Road is designed to change the music being played every time A Volkswagen Golf GTI does something new, whether its turning, changing gears, or T-boning a school bus filled with orphans.

Commenting on the project, Underworld’s Karl Hyde said: “Driving and music are probably the most important things in my musical education: sitting in the back of my dad’s car at night. It was a filmscape to me, it was beautifully lit and the dashboard was magical, and radio Luxemburg or some pirate station was on the radio and that was everything to me. It’s still the root of why I love music. Being in a car surfing the radio, finding stuff that suits how you feel.”

Of course, you could just cue up a Girl Talk record and get the same effect, but that’s not the point. With The Play The Road, you’ll at least have some control over where things are going musically.

Better to be able to slam on the brakes and mix things up than having Girl Talk suddenly downshift gears from Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose” to Kenny G.’s “The Moment”.