Orbital - Classic or Dud?

'times fly (fast)' is the best fake jungle track ever.

YES YES YES YES YES (except maybe "Are We Here?")

"Are We Here" wins.

Enrique I was going to suggest you take this to the fake jungle thread but I note that you already did 2 years ago.

i remember hearing 'Times Fly' for first time and feeling half 'wow this is great (sped up)' and half 'nooooo, bandwagon'

oh tim that has really upset me. i am senile :(

Help - what's the title of their track the first couple of minutes of which is slightly Philip Glass-sounding piano loops without a beat? I just have it listed as ? in my itunes.

Er... Science Friction? if it's 5:04 long.

Nah, 9.27!

I mean Kein Trink Wasser... and yeah that's 9:20something

lurrrrve that track

Thanks! Yeah, it's great.

Heh, been wondering what that track was for years now, thanks!

Wonky is the only proper album i never listened to, i still love shopping for cds so was holding off hoping i'd find one eventually, but i've never seen one for sale, while you can find pretty much every other Orbital album - i don't know if that's because folks do love it better compared to others or because it was released in smaller numbers

I've probably mentioned it up thread but the best new shit they've done post 2000 is the Don't Stop Me / The Gun is Good single. Why those aren't on an LP and why they didn't work on anything else around that time (it was released in between the Blue Album and Wonky) is beyond me. Those tracks are top notch and very much overlooked imho. Blue, Wonky, Monsters Exist and Optical Delusion just all sound samey with a few nifty bits here and there. Probably should revisit The Altogether, but thought it was very much not like them and not that great, basically trying to pull a Vespertine vibe or something, but maybe I was off there

Everything I've enjoyed from them post Middle of Nowhere has been either live stuff or their 30 Something anthology. Them having guest vocalists with lyrics on their last few has felt very... un-Orbital. Their use of samples and sampled monologues has always been more their thing and they often don't lean enough into that.

They still crush it live, though - very much enjoyed their last visit here.

i had a real moment with wonky when it came out, love every track on that thing

The Altogether I thought was fun but it doesn't feel like an album to me, it feels like one of those compilations of stuff that was too gimmicky to put on an album but too good to not release. Admittedly it's spotty but if you include the bonus disc there's a real good hour in there.

Blue Album is okay but you can tell they had one foot out the door, I think the Hartnolls even said they wanted it to just be an EP but wanted to give back to the fans. So again it doesn't feel like a proper album but it's definitely got some great tracks and some that are a lot of fun. They really punted the Sparks vocal though.

Wonky to me felt like a total comeback, maybe quite not on par with their classics but as good as you could reasonably expect I think. I dug how they really leaned into their sound and produced something unmistakenly Orbital, when I'm in the mood for the band but don't know what to put on I reach for this a lot.

Monsters Exist is kind of a dud, I'll defend it somewhat but I think what happened was, they split up and got back together again, started writing some more trademark Orbital stuff like "Copenhagen", got halfway through the album and realized, hmmm maybe we should try something different this time, inspired perhaps by Brexit/Trump filling them with dread, so they took things in a new direction but didn't quite realize it fully. Anyway, P.H.U.K. still rules, prob the direction they wanted to go in the first place.

Optical Delusion, as I've mentioned above...great, probably on par with Wonky. I think it maybe suffers a bit from going a bit too hard, also I think it could've used a big epic in the end...I think what might've worked it putting Are You Alive? at the end and extending it to a full on rave up.

Wonky’s good! Monsters Exist doesn’t really exist. Still waiting to hear the Mark Ayres mix of Optical Delusion (currently going for a mere $187 on ebay) before forming a strong opinion. Kneecap collab total banger. The Ideal Condition > 8:58 for Paul solo albums

The Ideal Condition is a cool record, its like an imaginary soundtrack album, I love how ornate and intricate it gets. title track in particular is really cool.

agreed 8:58 wasn't as good, in fact it's got some outright bad tracks on it, but "Cemetary" I think is as good as anything Orbital did in the 21st century

yeah frogbs otm with that summary above, but still feel all of those albums still can't really hold a candle to even Middle of Nowhere

Middle of Nowhere was the first Orbital album I bought and I do really love it. With hindsight, it's the end of their imperial phase - Altogether is patchy although the US bonus disc is great; Blue felt half baked; Wonky I LOVED and for some reason I haven't really clicked with any of the other comeback stuff.

should also point out there's a deluxe edition of Monsters Exist with a bunch of bonus tracks - its not really clear to me what they are exactly, but I'm guessing they were early cuts for the album that got swapped out once they changed direction (again, not sure if this is exactly what happened)...they're pretty good though

also seek out The Altogether bonus disc if you don't have it...I thought only the USA release had it but I could be mistaken...it's mostly Middle of Nowhere era remixes but there are some great B-sides..."Monorail", "Beezlebeat", and "Mock Tudor" are better than most of the album proper