Orbital C/D

only three tracks on 'Blue' i really like - 'Transient', 'You Lot' and 'Lost'

i want to hear the Ray Keith remix of 'Chime'. only just saw Dan's mentioning of it!

'You Lot' is included on one of the CD singles for 'One Perfect Sunrise' which might just be the worst Orbital single ever. apparently the video is a montage of other Orbital videos and performances. They should've done that with 'Frenetic', and 'Frenetic' is really the perfect last Orbital single imo but i don't suppose they will play it at Glasto :(

So is there an American release date offing over the horizon?

And which is the official tracklisting?

Come on now, pertinent questions awaiting!

1. Transient
2. Pants
3. Tunnel Vision
4. Lost
5. You Lot
6. Bath Time
7. Acid Pants
8. Easy Serv
9. One Perfect Sunrise

Is the official tracklisting, and the awesome "What Happens Next" is a b-side.

barry, any idea when it's available up here¿

Or down here, for that matter?

but more importantly - up here¿

Unfortunately I don't know ... since d/l'ing my version from slsk I haven't thought much about it.

They've broken up.

Oh right, sorry, shoulda read the thread.

Hey Colin, supposedly they have a new album coming out!

When I asked my ye aulde shoppe, they said July. I don't want to believe this.

Well, he could be forgiven. Time is running out to read threads, here.

I used to rate Orbital in my fav 3 acts of all genres, but it's not regrettable that they decide to split up after all this time. A friend once told me she thought Orbital embodied that big fork in the road ca. 1992, when the rave scene split between those who defered to the tee-pees of electronica's alt 'sprituality', and those who stayed with the grittiness of the urban scene. I'd have to agree.

So much of their music is majestic and ethereal (my fav being the live version of Out There Somewhere - Irvine Plaza live mix), but it's that same tone that's increasingly made them feel a little too fuzzy to maintain their pull/relevance.

I've since developed more of an appetite for tension in sound and themes, to excite a sense of the present moment, rather than the remember-a-time-when-chillouts-were-so-psychedelic-man type nostalgia that pines for great present moment's of years passed.

"Out There Somewhere" is fuzzy = the song takes several minutes to make its statement, the entire song is a big tease with little in the way of a euphoric moment like the opening notes of "Chime". Its great moments are smeared over several minutes, you have to wait a long time for the song to "deliver".

But that's just one song -- I'd say that "The Box" and "PETROL" (also from In Sides, of course) provide plenty of tension and immediacy.

(I may have completely misunderstood your argument, though)

What do you mean by "relevance"?

I think he was saying that "OTS" takes so long to reach its climax that the rush becomes lost along the way. (I disagree with this, btw).

Let's face it -- "OTS" is as proggy as techno gets. Not everyone wants to sit through a 26 minute techno opus about alien abduction as an allegory for the crucifixion. Sometimes you just want to play the last four minutes of "Impact USA" over and over.

Relevance as in - is there still a context for Orbital's kind of 'quirky'/playful/ethereal sound these days? How can it be used?

OTS might be a bit of an electro-cinematic extreme, but I'm also thinking of The Tranquilizer and Sad But New.

The most recent piece from them that I heard was "Ska'd For Life" on their Back to Mine mix. They were still all about exploring that gluey membrane between pop/electronica genres - which I've loved for many years - but while I agree a lot of their gear has a strong sense of immediacy, it just seems to suffer a lack of critical intensity that other producers seem to understand better.

Excepting maybe Impact and Oolaa.

I could imagine an alternate history Orbital post-Middle of Nowhere drifting closer and closer towards an expansive, "psychedelic" electro-techno sound that might have complemented nicely the more epic tendencies of the pearson/tiefschwarz/black strobe etc. etc. end of electro-house. Certainly tracks like "Know Where To Run" and "Nothing Left" had effective enough hooks, and the beats were on the whole pretty tough and simple.

I think I've said this before though.

OK, I was way off base with my understanding of your comments (although I stand by the stuff I ended up writing).

The Altogether was far too quirky/playful for my liking. They were trying to recapture the spirit of 1990. Too much "hands in the air" stuff.

"Technologicque Park" to thread, obviously.

Regarding the "relevance" of the quirky/playful stuff, the popularity of "Music Has the Right To Children" (and it's many clones) and Kid606/Tigerbeat6 indicate that this sort of music remains relevant to some people. If this music focused more on the cinematic side and less on the quirky side, I might actually listen to more of it.

"relevance" is a lie.

Well, I think Stockwell raises a point that maybe needs to be said, and I don't think the brothers would be upset to hear it made: for whatever reason I do think Orbital have failed to essentially reinvent themselves. Sick Mouthy had said the new album was so good because it was a nice recap of many of their best previous moments. But they've broken no new interesting ground. Despite the fact that this break up appears to have been brought on more because of becoming just sick of each other rather than perhaps any musical reasons, I do think it might just be sheer folly for them to continue creating indefinitely more of the very same stuff they have before.

I love Orbital, but I love them like a precious beautiful piece of porcelain on the mantelpiece which will essentially always stay the same. They're just not one of those artists/acts/bands that are capable - at least with each other - of really moving beyond their own admittedly wonderful formula.

Incase anyone is offended by what I've said I will freely admit I haven't heard The Altogether or the soundtrack they did "Octane". But if The Altogether was their step forward, clearly to many it was little more than a step in the wrong direction.

i started making a 'farewell' mix of Orbital tracks that i might put online if it comes out good enough (a lot of the segues are niiiiiice)

You see I don't get that idea of Orbital at all; with each of their albums up to and including Middle Of Nowhere they DID change what they were doing, alter the ideas they had and move forward. Sure, you could always tell it was Orbital, but this was because it was a development and progression rather than a revolution. Part of my problem with The Altogether was that it almost seemed as if they'd run out of ideas and ways to change, and had in part headed backwards ("Funny Break") and in part taken wrong decisions / given in to cliché (the David Gray thing / "Dr"). With the new one it's as if they recognise that this entropy was unassailable and so decided to make an album that didn't even TRY to broach new ground ("Transient" excepted), but rather sounded so much like their older material that it could almost be an homage or tribute, and thus give older fans a kind of retroactive buzz rather than the excitement of anything new.

But then I don't like to treat any music like "a precious beautiful piece of porcelain on the mantelpiece"; I want a certain amount of robustness alongside my beauty, a certain pragmatism with my idealism.

Bath Time is horrendous

the only problem with The Altogether for me is that there's just not enough to a lot of the tracks. 'Tension' should be even mightier than it is, MORE BASS MORE NOISE! things like 'Shadows' are too minimal. but 'Meltdown' and 'Last Thing' are pretty much spot on.

Double XPost to Sick:

Well, I'm not sure it's fair to say they didn't *progress* along a certain path, and that's not what I meant. But let me use an example. (and you're free to say it's a bad one) I don't recall any of Orbital's albums hitting me in the gobsmackingly surprised way Radiohead's Kid A did. I do think The Box EP was the closest thing to what I might have called a real surprise from them, a broadening of the horizons. It takes a special kind of band/artist to grow to that extent, it might even take a certain brilliance they simply don't posess, and how could we fault them for that? Surely none of us are even a smidgen as brilliant as they are.

But imagine what they might do free of each other's tether? For this I am hopeful, as I'm sure they are themselves. If I felt like weeping, I don't anymore. Good for them, you know?

Oh aye, I totally agree that they've done absolutey the right thing in splitting (I actually think they would have been right to split [sorry, stop] at any point post MoN - the last two albums are nice but I could totally live without them [heck, I could live without ANY piece of music; I just doubt I would WANT to live without ANY MUSIC AT ALL]) and going seperate ways, and it'll be interesting to see what happens.

However I don't think Radiohead are a good comparison for a few reasons.

a; The 'group dynamic' is totally different to the 'fraternal duo dynamic', and almost necessitates a greater level of diverse creative input and intra-group friction leading to creative change.

b; The 'experimental rock band dynamic' is totally different to the 'techno duo' dynamic (related but different to above).

c; R'head consciously set out to change (with every record but especially) with Kid A for a myriad of reasons that would and could never influence Orbital's work.

d; Shocking and dramatic change is not necessarily more radical or worthy or 'changing' than slowly evolved, subtle change.

No two Orbital albums, to me, sound 'of a kind' in the way that Kid A and Amnesiac do.

On that last point, you are correct, however, I believe releasing Amnesiac was a mistake in the sense that it was just leftovers from the same sessions as Kid A. There is no comparison in Orbital history that I'm aware of. I'd also like to add just as a side note, that as my friends dragged me, sleeplessly along to this idea of seeing RH live, Amnesiac had just been released and was another reason why I was less than enthused about seeing them live. Bewildered, ho-hum and just trying to stay awake, RH then proceeded to completely blow my mind in a live setting, and my expectations were torn apart.

But since we're talking about Orbital, they may indeed be the kings of live performance, so...

Sick, before I peter out on this board, what's your opinion of Octane? Or is there a review I missed somewhere?

I've never really listened to it; what I've heard I see as "functional soundtrack" and little more. It's kinda like comparing my blog or Stylus with my cataloguing or "user-manual writing".

Hmm. I see...Orbital in boring soundtrack mode...hard to imagine, frankly.

ATTENTION: Orbital are live on the John Peel Show at 11pm tonite ! i.e about 50 minutes time

tune in via the web

ORBITAL start at 11.30 pm for 90 minutes according to Peel

it's started.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1

where is everyone?

Not at a computer?

listening to it on the "listen again" thing right now - fucking brilliant, brings a tear to the eye.

thanks for the reminder, off to 'listen now'

this into your real player for last night's show

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/rpms/peel_wed.rpm

the news over-ran, so seek forward. orbital start at about 31 mins in

who are these wallies who keep shouting 'BADGER!'?

Haha I think I know them!

you know there's less charm to a live gig played by a faceless techno outfit playing on the radio and heard the next day than you might imagine ;-)

I am reviving this thread because "Acid Pants" came up on shuffle when I was listening to my iPod the other day and I practically had an orgasm.

Also:

I am currently trying to figure out how I can turn "Acid Pants" into a hat.

-- VengaDan Perry (djperr...) (webmail), May 1st, 2004. (link)

Roffle.

You haberdasher you.