Orbital - Classic or Dud?

Brown is the best starting point, very possibly, either that or InSides depending which angle you're coming from. Brown for dancefloor/big field orientated techno, InSides for pretty living room listening.

I still think Brown, especially the four or five tracks that work as a continuous mix, is the best and possibly earliest manifestation of how to do a techno album without going down the dreaded 'album dance' route.

I'm talking in mainstream album-buying circles here, at least.

InSides for pretty INCREDIBLE MAJESTIC 'OMG IT'S THE RAPTURE AND I'M FLOATING UP TO HEAVEN' living room listening

^ add italics, quote attribution

Thanks to all this talk I am currently playing the brown album at work, and I salute you all.

I honestly think the Green album is unfairly maligned - the triumvirate of Chime, Midnight and Belfast is completely unfuckable with. There are a couple of clunkers (eg Desert Storm) but Fahrenheit 303 is nearly up there with frequencies era LFO I reckon. Much as I like the Brown album, I find the vibe a bit too proggy in places.

still love this joint dumb vocals and all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrzcgU-1rYk

Glad you lot inspired me to get In Sides yesterday, I've listened to it three times today and it's fucking great. I love how lots of the tracks don't really reveal themselves till several minutes in. Both parts of Out There Somewhere make me feel like I've bosched two or three incredibly mongy pills, with the ketamine coming out a couple of minutes before the end of part two.

But seriously, there's way more to this music than can be described with lazy drug references - the attention to detail is astounding, and I look forward to exploring the rest of their catalogue in more depth.

^_^

the comments about how In Sides is great are all basically describing exactly my problems with it
stuff like secret tapes of dr eich or saw 85-92 boils down to one or two really good ideas per track and then they just work it for 4-6 minutes
In Sides is a bunch of pretentious wibble, the long version of The Box at least tacitly admits that it's a total Rush jam for synth fnerds

InSides for pretty INCREDIBLE MAJESTIC 'OMG IT'S THE RAPTURE AND I'M FLOATING UP TO HEAVEN' living room listening

^^^^ yech

I don't get how you can not like this!

I get yr point Tombot but I don't think "take one or two ideas and work them" straightforwardness and proggy complexity are something we have to choose between. There are good and bad versions of both surely.

That's not even taking into account the fact/opinion that said "proggy complexity" exists in their work as far back as "Satan".

Not surprising that Tombot chose Underworld over Orbital in the versus thread - Underworld are kinda like the middle ground between these two positions, jacking one or two ideas and then gradually transitioning to jacking another one or two ideas. The myopic intensity of many of the best tracks on Beaucoup Fish is an excellent example of this.

Incidentally Snivilisation strikes me as an album with intentionally few ideas-per-track, with only a handful of obvious exceptions ("Forever", "Sad But True", "Are We Here?"). I probably listen to this album the most of their albums but mostly for sentimental reasons - in many senses it's weaker than Brown, In Sides and MoN in that it mostly shies away from what is Orbital's key weapon - the redemption of complexity as a viable modus operandi in and of itself.

I think "Spare Parts Express" is probably the most ostentatiously restless of Orbital's tracks, and the way it goes from so ludicrously bright and intense (like fluorescent lights pointed directly into your face) into nervous territory and then gothic territory and then back again is quite amazing - not because it does this per se, but because each idea drifts into the next so organically, so inevitably, such that the joins don't register as joins. I suspect the title is truthful - this is a speed-trip through a whole host of fragments of tracks that Orbital had come up with, and decided to work into a single track. What makes this track so amazing, so distinctively Orbital, is the fact that they can do this so successfully: in isolation these sonic motifs would be less remarkable, it's their seamless interconnectedness which stuns. There's a compositional craft here which critics are too quick to translate into non-dance music terms (e.g. Orbital as the Bach of techno) - surely dance music has always been about the overlaying of motifs, albeit via the grafting of disparate tracks from multiple artists on top of one another. I think of Orbital at their best as a kind of mercantilist venture: they act as agents of change (usually the role of the DJ) as well as agents of repetition (the traditional role of the producer).

I remember watching an interview with one Hartnoll or other on telly yonks ago, in which he said he didn't see himself as an artist as much as a craftsman, and that creating an Orbital track was like making a teak desk. I liked that so much it's stuck with me. Refreshingly humble and quite drole.

the long version of The Box at least tacitly admits that it's a total Rush jam for synth fnerds

Bahahahah! This is comedy gold, folks.

I listened to Rush today at the gym...plenty of synths. Outdated ones but very beautiful.

I'm dying to pull out Orbital again. Because of this thread.

Playing In Sides now for the first time in a billion years...

I thought Paul Oakenfold or someone made that teak desk comment? Maybe he ripped it off.

straightforwardness and proggy complexity are something we have to choose between

they shouldn't be, right? I have Weather Report and Jeff Beck on here, right? Except that I can chuckle at them because yeah EVERYBODY knows those guys are trying too hard/wanking/self-indulgent/goofy but Orbital (on this thread) gets a pass for the same shit because they run in through a hardware sequencer and market to people who do a different brand of drugs. Fuck that. It's masturbatory prog. Worship it at your own peril etc

said "proggy complexity" exists in their work as far back as "Satan".

which is the biggest piece of trash on the green album by a long shot, even beating desert storm.

i never 'got' the brown album, not totally.

i think the single versh of 'halcyon' is one of their best ever things and the elpee mix is not quite as good. 'impact' is also a total fave but better in the live version and the version on 'diversions'.

apart from those, though... it's more dancey, but it's still not *that dancey* is it? feel they fell between stools a bit w. 'lush', 'remind', 'walk now'. whereas even on the not-dancey 'snivilisation' you still have 'are we here'.

plus brown album reminds me of 'shopping' -- sonics much more of their time than the other lps, imo.

^ OTM I think.

"I have Weather Report and Jeff Beck on here, right? Except that I can chuckle at them because yeah EVERYBODY knows those guys are trying too hard/wanking/self-indulgent/goofy but Orbital (on this thread) gets a pass for the same shit because they run in through a hardware sequencer and market to people who do a different brand of drugs. Fuck that. It's masturbatory prog."

So, Tombot, what you're really saying is "we don't have to choose between simplicity and complexity, as long as we only think of complex music as a joke."

go fuck yourself

having to explain my distaste for their overwrought bullshit on In Sides and everything afterwards has only served to make me more extremist in my views and I am seriously like five minutes away from deleting everything by them off my hard drive

yes, Tim, "trying too hard" is a sin, in music and everything else, whatever. Indulging it without recognizing it for what it is is some coldplay/dave-matthews spectrum bullshit. go put on a ballcap and see about that open mic.

WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER
polyphony is the hobgoblin of small minds
etc

chillax

You couldn't be wronger about this.

The thing that Orbital is good at, possibly better than all of their contemporaries, is making maximalism seem effortless. I'm listening to "Are We Here?" right now and the beat-crafting going on in that track combined with the seamless blend from one music section to another, the stereo panning, the sung and spoken vocal sample placements... even down to the moment when they turn up the tinny reverb on an isolated drum loop then drop back into the main warm sine wave motif a little over 8 minutes into the track... It's great. There's nothing wrong with proggy maximalism if you know what you're doing and it's patently obvious these guys know what they're doing.

You seem to be on some "multiple layers of music is always bad" horseshit here, which is really is really just a Geirism in a funny hat.

(For the record, I really like what I've heard of The Weather Report and I don't really know Jeff Beck so I can't comment, but your analogy kind of doesn't work if other people don't actually agree with you about the artists you're comparing them to, either.)

I don't really see where this is going because the Brown album and (especially) Snivilisation are JUST as proggy and overwrought as In Sides, considerably more so in Snivilisation's case.

And except maybe Are We Here, I don't think of any of this stuff as that complex or polyphonic either. InSides for all its self-conscious grandeur is actually a much more intimate listen than either of its predecessors, perhaps this explains why that material didn't work as well live.

I'm specifically thinking of InSides in contrast to something like Dominik Eulberg's Fauna & Flora here, which which aims for that same combination of psuedo-classical intricacy and intimacy and big gesture grandeur but works better as functional dance music, maybe it's the sense of space or a more obvious pulse, I dunno.

You seem to be on some "multiple layers of music is always bad" horseshit here, which is really is really just a Geirism in a funny hat.

Not just Geirism in a funny hat but pretty much the opposite of everything I stand for musically. Can we also ditch the vituperative descriptor "proggy maximalism", please?

My point, really, is that minimalism and maximalism both work really, really well if the people doing them are "good" at it. There's nothing inherently better about one vs the other; you can find just as much awesome in "Out There Somewhere" as you can in Exposure's "Peak Experience" or F.U.S.E.'s "F.U.".

TS the fact that Dan is basically right vs 'what's the world coming to if techno people can't take positions of ridiculous dogmatic inflexibility?'

This thread is silly.

haha Matt

Wow Tombot did Mozart kill your entirely family or what.

How long before someone marches onto this thread, tears up a poster of FSOL and shouts "Fight the real enemy!!"

What the...:

Man, FSOL have made a crapload of songs...
-Yes. Yes they have.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lfo

I worry a bit about Headphoneus Supremus -- not his opinions on the albums so much as that sig of his.

Actually maybe Mozart DID rise from the grave and kill Tombot's family:

ZOMBIE MOZART

OMG the LOLs on this thread.

. Can we also ditch the vituperative descriptor "proggy maximalism", please?

Hahhaha I agree. I mean yeah I know, Dan is basically right and all, but shit dudes we're talking about techno here. We don't have to GO THERE>>>
Right? There's a huge difference between what Orbital do and a long wanking guitar solo.

i don't really get why orbital is being described as 'prog' at all. their basic M.O. on every song i can think of is to stack loops excessively until there's a ton of shit going on.

i do think that Orbital and a LOT of ambient and techno stuff is coming from a similar mentality to that of musicians who get into long jam sessions.

But they're not showing off their instrumental virtuosity, their tracks are all very thoughtfully and purposefully constructed. Jam sessions are more about 'hey, look what I can do, aren't I great'.

It's more akin to the long, elaborate, completely un-improvised instrumental passages in the proggier end of thrash metal, in many ways.

i know that the 'look what i can do' thing is a key aspect of some types of jam sessions, but another aspect is riding a 'groove' and interplay between musicians. anyone whose been in a garage band knows how fun it can be to just get into a zone where the rhythm section finds a great groove and the leads take turns throwing shit over it. to me, knob tweaking over a great rhythmic structure is exactly the same feeling.

i've always believed that Orbital's writing process was probably the two of them in a studio with a ton of synths, just improvising until something kick ass stuck and then just riding it out.

^^^^^^^ I suspect this is OTM.

I reckon they did that to come up with the initial riffs and then carefully pieced it all together in a manner geared to cause maximum awesomeness.

Tombot in this thread depresses me somewhat. We need MORE complex, intricate, multi-layered techno, not less.

And yeah, STOP with the "prog" label, just because something progresses doesn't mean it's gotta have a term of derision attached to it. ALL good music progresses to some extent.

Anyone have those records from when FSOL had yet to become FSOL and called themselves Mental Cube? "Chile of the Bass Genearation" 12"? OMG that is the shit. In fact, it was so good someone stole it from me right after I played that record on the air once. I know exactly who stole it, too.

Anyway...

We need MORE complex, intricate, multi-layered techno, not less.

I agree, in a big way. Orbital were doing something quite daring at the time they first started, first two albums...challenging the norm of dance music entirely. To hear them was to think "why aren't there more acts like this?"

I do think the green album is probably unfairly maligned, but the truth was that the sounds just didn't age all that well. And once you've heard the Joey Beltram mix of Chime, the original will always sound like a slow, boring turtle in comparison.

Also I would like to express how weird it was to be attending chemistry class wearing an Orbital shirt, since orbitals are talked about in said class. My professor noticed my shirt and I must have seemed like the world's most slavish teacher's pet. And all I wanted was for someone - anyone - to tell me they knew this techno duo. *weeps*

ALL good music progresses to some extent.

Not all.

Yeah I was gonna say...Beatles are verse/chorus/verse/chorus right?