Orbital C/D

The only thing I don't like about Orbital is that they aren't really about dancing so much as just going "wow".

This is true.

I disagree (but I would).

Yeah I thought you might dude!

Typical.

Orbital to me have always been pretty much 50/50 ratio in terms of dancing and listening/experiencing as primary functions of their music

The giant windpower blades at the beginning of The Girl With the Sun In Her Head are mega.

(megawhat? megawatt. sorry...)

Orbital 2 - CLASSIC! ONE OF MY FAVORITES! HOORAY!
Yes, Lukas those blades are mega-mega-megatron!!!!

Transform!

Man, I SUCK! Boredom is a horrible thing.

I was serious about Orbital 2, though.

New album June 21st:

Orbital - Blue
http://www.loopz.co.uk/discog/album/blue.html

Old-skool atom cover, original Orbital loop, named after a colour... these are all good signifiers. I'm hopeful for a return to form here.

Tracks called 'Pants' however, fill be with horrific versions of Altogetheresque comedy techno.

further evidence they're becoming/have become the Simply Red of techno

will 'You Lot' sample 'The Magnificent Seven' i wonder..?

It features Sparks, who are back on top form, how fucking great is this going to be. Simply Red, pah.

Nice cover. "Pants" sounds rubbish but the fact that it's followed later in the album by "Acid Pants" may redeem it.

Yes, I have no problem whatsoever with tracks called 'Acid Pants'. Orbital wouldn't dare use the word "acid" in a track title and have anything less than three simultaneous 303 lines squoinking away over one another.

Word has it that the new album is more InSides/Snivilisation than the last two albums, with the exception of Sunrise which is meant to be proper euphoric Halcyon hands-in-the-air stuff.

The sample from You Lot goes something like: "Unravelled DNA and at the same time youre cultivating bacteria strong enough to kill every living thing. Do you think you are ready for that much power. You lot ? You lot? You're running around science like kids with guns." Which needs to be a huge Snivilisation/Forever-esque rant over the top otherwise I will be hugely disappointed.

I have absolutely no reason to be excited by this, but I am nonetheless.

What Matt has just written there has made me piss my pants, like.

i'm sure i'll love this no matter what

Orbital were really something once. I found M of N pleasant, but...hmm. I heard one song from Altogether and was like...THAT was Orbital?? I didn't bother purchasing it. I agree that in hindsight the Brown album was really where it was at. Infact, I almost want to jump off a bridge right now for selling it once. I heard it playing in a store recently and was ridden with guilt. I just figured I'd be able to buy it again someday. Maybe I'll go straight to the store after writing this and rectify this horrible situation immediately.

The Brown album hangs together better because one song flows into another, one idea flows into another.

Thank god there's a CD store just up the street. I feel SO much better now.

Oh HOW I USED TO WORSHIP THEM THEN!!!!

I still have my Orbital jersey really really I do! It's deteriorated but you should have seen my chemistry professor's face when he saw those atomic orbitals on the front!

Not to mention the fact it said "Orbital" on the back. In Chemistry class. Insane!

IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT ORBITAL 2. IT IS ALL ABOUT IN SIDES.

My Snivilisation peeps, represent!

IT IS ALSO ALL ABOUT SNIVILIZATION, TIM'S OTM

Uh, they're all good?

Snivilization as an album was a disappointment when it came out...a bit puzzling really. They vastly improved with "The Box" EP and yes, there are a few songs on In Sides that are some of the best of their career by far

but still...Orbital 2 had the cohesion, the consistency. To maintain that over an entire album's length is pretty rare.

I dunno I think the cohesion and consistency of Orbital 2 is kinda overrated - an artist album that works like a DJ set is a good idea obv but, y'know, DJ sets that work like DJ sets are pretty cool too.

Plus with Orbital 2 you get this amazing run from "Lush" through to the end of "Remind" but the "cohesion" of the rest is only notable in comparison to the schizophrenia of Snivilization. Most of the allegedly unique qualityies of Orbital 2 are present in Middle Of Nowhere as well (the excellent flow of the first three tracks; "Nothing Left" as a sequel to "Halcyon" only even vaster).

Orbital 2 is still an amazing album obv, but I'm not sure if its qualities are automatically superior to Snivilization - whose perversity and restlessness frequently captivate me.

Of course if Orbital 2 had the full version of "Impact (The Earth Is Burning)" it might *well* be unbeatable.

there's an even bigger version of "impact?" the one on orbital 2 is well over ten minutes, if i recall.

in sides is still an unreal experience start-to-finish. 2 benefits quite a bit from tracks running together, but i hardly notice the transitions on much of in sides, even when they incorporate a change in beat and key. they're cleverly done.

The reworked version of Impact USA was the best version of Impact - they tidied up the melodic bit at the beginning slightly and then prolonged the messy apocalyptic Cry For Survival bit at the end with loads of extra squealy noises on top.

The best version of Impact was the one played on the MoN tour, where they reversed the parts so you got the hard bit first and then uplifting first section kicked in later. Destroyed the concept, but sounded incredible (especially when it was sandwiched in between Spare Parts Express and Know Where To Run as part of a continuous mix).

InSides is the most coherant thing they've done. Incidentally, dodgy as The Altogether may have been, all the haterz overlook the 9 minute majesty of MELTDOWN, especially the sublime closing section. More of that please.

i put the altogether dvd on last night and cracked on with stuff with that in the background .. tis a grower .. found myself really digging it far mroe than originally.
anyone heard that soundtrack album thats in the HMV sales ? worthy of 6 shiny coins ?

If I ahd to take two into outerspace with me it'd be 'Brown' and In Sides, definitely.

'The Altogether' remains unfairly misjudged. people always think David Gray and Tool when they should be thinking FUNNY BREAK, LAST THING, TENSION, OI, PAY PER VIEW, SHADOWS and MELTDOWN

STEVEM COMPLETELY OTM (and also the David Gray song is actually great if you pay attention to it and aren't busy going "I AM FAR TOO COOL TO LIKE SOMETHING WITH DAVID GRAY ON IT FNAR FNAR FNAR")

matt otm re: meltdown - there's just so much wonderful stuff going on in that track. i can't believe at first i completely dysmissed that track and now it's one of my fav's.

Yup, Snivilisation's my fave, too. Glad to see some luv for it here!

It's all about "In Sides". That album cannot be touched. It's a toss up between that and "Loveless" for the best album of the 90's.

Orbital for Glasto 2004
http://www.efestivals.co.uk/news/040421c.shtml

I'm sorry, but The Altogether is *not* unfairly misjudged - even if you took off the David Grey track it would be fairly uninteresting and flat-sounding. "Meltdown" is good though.

Tim, don't be sorry about it - it's fucking rubbish.

stevem and I have magic ears.

I'd ask you to lend me them, but I'm sure it'd still be rubbish.

In what universe can "Funny Break", "Pay Per View", "The Last Thing", and "Meltdown" be considered flat or rubbish?

A universe where the group's previous work exists and is known.

"Funny Break" is nice obv but its stand-out status is relative to the rest of the album; it falls short of most of their previous vocal numbers.

"After 15 years working together as Orbital, Paul and Phil Hartnoll have announced that their forthcoming LP the “Blue Album” will be their last. Following the album’s release on 21st of June, Orbital will play Brixton Academy on 25th of June followed by their last ever English live show, closing the second stage on Sunday June 27th at Glastonbury.

“I think we feel that Orbital has run it’s course,” says Paul Hartnoll. “We’re both pursuing different avenues with our music. And we’ve been sat, as brothers, in the same room for 15 years now–and studios are always confined spaces–I think it’s time for a change.”

Since their first single, ‘Chime’ entered the top 20 in April 1990 Orbital have released six albums and developed a live show that evolved, by common consent into one of the landmark performance shows of the last decade. They have helped to shape and develop both the character and credibility of electronic music far beyond the disposable anonymity of the first white labels and the acid house scene that they came from. In 1989–when Chime was recorded onto their dad’s cassette player–no–one expected things to come this far, least of all the band themselves.

The brothers extra–mural interests have all informed the character of The Blue Album, the bands seventh, which evolved gradually over the course of 2003 with the band free from record company expectations and schedules for the first time since their career began. “If anything,” says Paul “It’s closer in character to our first album than our later ones, if only because we made it in our own time and for ourselves.”

Fans will recognise the trademark Orbital sound when they hear it. Familiar themes from previous albums, such as religion, are also present.
“There’s a couple of references to that,” says Paul. One of my favourite tracks, “You Lot” has got this speech from Christopher Eccleston from this fantastic drama called The Second Coming. I just really loved that programme and that speech is quite typically orbital, like our other track Forever, that’s got a speech halfway through and I really love the sentiment behind that. That whole programme was about the second coming, obviously, and God.”

“We’ve got another track [One Perfect Sunrise] we did with Lisa Gerrard who was in Dead Can Dance, singing on it. That’s a spin off from something we wrote for a Sunrise scene, in another film …that’s turned out well.”

Noted for their collaborations, Orbital’s last album is no exception
featuring work from fellow sibling legends, Sparks.
“We were wanting some vocals on the track Pants, something fairly odd, and thought Sparks would be perfect,” says Paul. “It turned out they’re quite up for a bit of collaboration and said yes when we approached them. After we’d asked them I set about listening to some of their recent work and was pleasantly surprised to find it was even more bonkers than their original stuff. It was all done across the Atlantic, via file sharing and CD’s, and when we heard it we realised it was really a track in it’s own right so we remixed it and it’s ended up here as Acid Pants, it’s own thing.”

Another audible influence on the album is that of legendary transsexual composer Walter/Wendy Carlos. “Absolutely,” says Paul, “I tried to do something with a sort of Clockwork Orange feel, and that became ‘Bath Time’ . It started off by being hummed in the bath on tour before I was about to go and meet everyone for a pint in San Francisco. Got out of the bath and scribbled it down on my laptop and finished it over last summer, adding little bits in buses and vans while I was travelling. And it went on from there. It became like Clockwork Orange and Kraftwerk combined. Electronic music for electronic musics sake, dodging all real instrument sounds. Wheras ‘Easy Serve’ is weird supermarket muzak, almost like hospital muzak. Maybe it’s a supermarket where they only sell hospital items. Here’s the lip section…Either way, it’s not going to be a coffee table album. But then we’ve never done one of them. Maybe a coffee table album at three in the morning, when everyone is blind drunk and no one can remember anything anyway.”

With the album complete the band are turning their attention to their final show at Glastonbury. An appropriate venue for a farewell as it was here, exactly ten years before that Orbital delivered a live show that Q magazine listed as one of the fifty greatest live show of all time. “It’s nice to know that we’re finishing, it’s not many bands that do that. They tend to just fade away. And it’s nice to have our last gig at Glastonbury. It’s gonna be a party set, a best of Orbital. We’re not gonna sit there and try and promote the new album. I think if we’re gonna do a last gig we should do distilled set of all the best stuff we’ve done. And that’s what we’re gonna do, play all the stuff that’s stuck around for all this time because they are the favourite ones. This will definitely be our last ever live shows,” confirms Paul, “Although I’m sure Status Quo keep telling themselves the same thing.”

Read on for details of how to get tickets for the last UK indoor gig @ Brixton."

http://www.loopz.co.uk/begin.html

Let me repeat this:

“If anything,” says Paul “It’s closer in character to our first album than our later ones, if only because we made it in our own time and for ourselves.”

Ugh, that's definitely not what I wanted to hear.

Wow! Thanks for posting that!! The bit about it being like their first album bothers me not a bit. I liked the first one, but part of its appeal was just that it sounded so different to anything else at the time. I wouldn't expect them to go back to using the same SOUNDS they were using then, and remember they are a lot more experienced now.

Ned had said the best version of "Chime" was on the Satan Live CD thing...I beg to differ, I think there was a Joey Beltram mix I have on vinyl somewhere that really exploited the bell sound nicely...it was the first time I ever heard Orbital and my jaw dropped. Both that and the "Chime Crime" version on the Mutations EP made the album version of "Chime" seem slow as molasses when I finally heard it.