“This album is opening a lot of doors we hadn’t anticipated,” Karl Hyde told inthemix back in June. With a career that has stretched 30 years and countless ecstatic live shows, you have to wonder what doors were left closed to Underworld. However, if you hold Barking alongside its predecessor Oblivion With Bells, you start to see the man’s point. While that record looked inward, this one is all about celebration. Those doors, it would seem, open directly onto massive festival stages (or, indeed, parties with Erol Alkan, Boys Noize, Crookers and the like).

The talking point of Barking has been its collaborations. Hyde and his long-time studio partner Rick Smith invited a disparate cast of producers to contribute ‘additional production’ to eight of the nine tracks. It’s a move that has conflicted some long-time fans: after all, shouldn’t Underworld be showing them how it’s done? On the flip-side, who can begrudge the duo from wanting to exchange ideas with artists they admire? That Barking is not an unqualified success is hardly surprising, but it does show Underworld reinvigorated to make music for dancefloors. Which, as anyone who has raved to King Of Snake will testify, is no bad thing.

Lead single Scribble set the tone for what was to come; a ready-made summer anthem that recalls the early rush of Pearl’s Girl while also bearing the distinctive hallmarks of its co-creator High Contrast. It’s drum & bass on an unashamed pop bent, with Hyde’s vocals set squarely to ‘uplift’. High Contrast returns later on Moon In Water, a track that swells and stomps without ever brocking out. It’s a different angle for the Hospital Records star (“he was wanting to break out of a drum & bass-only mould,” Hyde told us), but it falls well short of Underworld’s best.

The rest of the guest-list on Barking is a mixed bag. As often maligned as he is for DJ sets that go nowhere, Dubfire proves to be a winning ally in the studio for Smith and Hyde. He pares back some of the album’s extravagances, favouring slow-building mood over all-out euphoria. His ‘additional production’ on album opener Bird 1 offsets Hyde’s ethereal vocal with a bassline that thuds ominously, before it all pulses higher and higher.

It’s quite a different beast from Always Loved A Film, which leaves no doubt that Mark Knight and D. Ramirez played a part. In fact, it begins exactly like a D. Ramirez tune from the mid-2000s, before setting its sights squarely on the main room. No one’s going for subtlety here, not least Hyde, who sounds almost dangerously enraptured. The production powers go into making it as bold and unabashed as possible, complete with thudding bass and fist-pumping breakdowns.

Knight and D. Ramirez also flex their muscle on the equally energised Between Stars; something of a retro-anthem that crescendos almost frenetically on record but would be perfectly at home at a loved-up festival. These stonking numbers can’t help but invite comparison to Faithless’s The Dance, another album that sees a seasoned dance music group reaching for the heights of ‘90s peaktime.

It’s something of a relief to find Hamburg Hotel in the midst of all this ecstasy. Bristolians Komonazmuk and Appleblim bring their signature shuffling dub atmospherics to the track, although it’s very hard to know where Underworld is in the mix. By contrast, Grace represents the album’s best meeting of minds; Hyde’s freeform vocals given space to breathe by the Dubfire-assisted production. Diamond Jigsaw calls on Paul van Dyk for another of Barking’s swirling, hands-in-the-air moments. It’s busy and propulsive, but doesn’t leave an indelible impression.

That iconic voice turns wavering and meditative for album closer Louisiana; the only track without outside input. It’s a soft and almost hymn-like send-off for Underworld, about as far from the earlier excesses as you could get. Barking will, as the frontman seems to suggest, take the group to a new audience – or realign them with the heady days of Born Slippy. It will be fascinating to see if the studio door remains open the next time Rick Smith and Karl Hyde set their sights on an album.

Barking is out 10 September through Shock Records.