Orbital (band)

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Orbital
Background information
Origin	Sevenoaks, Kent, England
Genre(s)	Electronica House Techno Ambient techno
Years active	1989 to 2004
Label(s)	ffrr EMI
Website	http://www.loopz.co.uk/
Former members
Paul Hartnoll Phil Hartnoll

Orbital was an English techno duo formed in 1989, consisting of brothers Paul (born 19 May 1968) and Phil Hartnoll (born 9 January 1964). The name was taken from the raves that occurred in the late 1980s near the M25 orbital motorway that circles London. They were initially influenced by early electro and punk rock.

Contents 1 Career 2 Soundtracks 3 Trivia 4 Selected discography 4.1 Albums 4.2 Singles/EPs 4.3 Paul Hartnoll Singles 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] Career

In 1989, Orbital recorded a track called "Chime" on their father's cassette deck. It was released on Oh Zone Records in December 1989, and re-released on FFRR Records a few months later. The track became a rave anthem, a UK Top 20 hit, and a benchmark for the rest of their career. A few singles and EPs followed, and their first self-titled album was released in late 1991. This was a collection of tracks recorded at various times, and included In late 1992 the Radiccio EP barely reached the UK top forty, but it included probably their most well-known song, "Halcyon". The song featured a backwards sample of Kirsty Hawkshaw from "It's a Fine Day" (a chart hit for Opus III earlier that year), and B-side "The Naked and the Dead" was similarly based on a line from Scott Walker's rendition of Jacques Brel's song "Next".

The duo's popularity grew rapidly with the release of their second album, titled Orbital 2, in 1993. The album featured complex arrangements and textures, and reached #28 on the UK album charts, staying in the top chart for fifteen weeks. "Halcyon" was remixed for the album, as "Halcyon + On + On". The first two albums are commonly known as "the green album" and "the brown album", after the colour of their covers.

The third album Snivilisation was released in August 1994. Alison Goldfrapp provided vocals on a couple of the tracks, including the single "Are We Here?". This track also included a sample from "Man at C&A" by The Specials. Among the remixes of "Are We Here?" was "Criminal Justice Bill?" - four minutes of silence, a reference to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which was in part intended to clamp down on the rave scene which had given birth to Orbital. The other track with Goldfrapp vocals, "Sad But True", was remixed for the "Times Fly" EP, the band's only release in 1995.

The band became known for their live shows, wearing their trademark head-mounted flashlights behind banks of equipment, and giving an improvisational element to live electronic music as the brothers mixed and sequenced their tracks on the fly. They were one of the few electronic acts invited to play at Woodstock '94. One of the highlights of their career was their headline appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in 1994. Possibly as a result of this show, Q Magazine included them in their list of "50 Bands to See Before You Die".

After a quiet 1995, the single "The Box" was released in April 1996, reaching #11 in the UK. Its parent album In Sides revealed a less obviously dance-oriented sound than previously, and had more in common with soundtrack music. As with the previous album, there was a vague theme of ecological disaster and dissatisfaction with society. The following year, the duo contributed to film soundtracks (The Saint, Event Horizon) and enjoyed the biggest singles of their career, with a live version of "Satan" and their reworking of the aforementioned "The Saint" theme both reaching #3 in the UK.

1998 saw a return to the studio to work on their fifth album The Middle of Nowhere. This was released in 1999, and was a return to a more upbeat style, with Alison Goldfrapp returning on vocals and the single "Style" (incorporating stylophone sounds). In 2000 a single was released from the soundtrack to the film The Beach, mixing the brothers' musical style with a melody by Angelo Badalamenti and the words of Leonardo DiCaprio from the film.

2001's The Altogether featured guest vocals by the Hartnolls' brother-in-law David Gray, a sampled Ian Dury, and a version of the Doctor Who theme. It was to be their last album for FFRR, and had a mixed critical reception. The following year, Work 1989-2002 collected various singles from "Chime" onwards.

Orbital split up in 2004. They played a final series of gigs from June through July 2004 at the Glastonbury Festival, the T in the Park Festival in Scotland, the Oxegen festival (formerly known as Witnness) in Ireland, and the Wire Festival in Japan, concluding with a live Peel Session gig at Maida Vale Studios in London on July 28, 2004. The release of their seventh and last original album, The Blue Album (which, unlike the untitled previous green and brown albums, was actually named "The Blue Album"), coincided with this final wave of shows. The album featured Sparks (on "Acid Pants"), Lisa Gerrard (on the final single "One Perfect Sunrise"), and a speech by Christopher Eccleston from the TV miniseries The Second Coming.

Paul Hartnoll is continuing to record music under his own name, including tracks for the new Wipeout Pure game for the PSP. Phil Hartnoll is concentrating on forming a new electronica duo, Long Range, with Nick Smith. Long Range will have a fairly similar sound to Orbital.

In October 2006, Orbital's official site confirmed that the group would have a release in the near future. In November 2006 LOOPZ announced that the album will contain live audio from the Glastonbury Festival and will be released early next year.

In September 2005 Phil Hartnoll started to record his latest project Long Range, The first album Madness and Me, is due out the late part of 2007. The album is a collection of music ranging from more down tempo electronica to massive festival hits reminiscent of Phil's past act, Orbital. There are a score of more club singles in the lead up to the release of the album in 2007.

[edit] Soundtracks

Original film/TV music

• Event Horizon (1997) • with composer Michael Kamen #83 UK
• Octane (2003)
• Keen Eddie • score for first episode (2003)

Cover versions

• The Saint (1997) • theme tune • released as a single and added as an extra track to later editions of In Sides
• Doctor Who (1963-) • theme tune • featured on The Altogether, their sixth studio album • this version was also used to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the programme, being the background music for various clips on DVDs released in 2003

Featured songs

• Hackers (1995) • "Halcyon + On + On" (shortened version) • used as the film's theme
• Mortal Kombat (1995) • "Halcyon + On + On"
• Groove (2000) • "Halcyon + On + On"
• CKY2K (2001) • "Halcyon + On + On"
• Mean Girls (2004) • "Halcyon + On + On"
• Johnny Mnemonic (1995) • "Sad But True"
• The Saint (1997) • "The Box"
• A Life Less Ordinary (1997) • "The Box" and "Dŵr Budr"
• Spawn (1997) • "Satan" (with Kirk Hammett)
• π (1998) • "P.E.T.R.O.L" from the album In Sides
• Human Traffic (1999) • "Belfast" • Played when the ravers are driving back from the house party
• The Beach (2000) • "Beached", in collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti (original to this film)
• xXx (2002) • "Technologicque Park" (original to this film) • Orbital appear in the film during the night club/rave sequence

Orbital's music has also been featured in various releases of the Wipeout video game series, with the latest being Wipeout Fusion.

[edit] Trivia

• Orbital are known for incorporating political and social commentary into their music.
  • "Desert Storm" on their first album is widely believed to be a response to the first Gulf War.
  • "Halcyon" (and the better known remix, "Halcyon + on + on") was apparently inspired by the Hartnolls' mother's tranquiliser addiction; The main vocal sample loop comes from the Opus III song "It's a Fine Day", from their debut album Mind Fruit
  • "Belfast" derives from when Orbital played live in the city of Belfast during The Troubles in 1990.[1]
• Much of Orbital's work is inspired by environmental themes.
  • The track "Forever" on their third album Snivilisation samples a speech by Graham Crowden from the 1982 Lindsay Anderson film Britannia Hospital, in which he lambasts humankind for its destructive ways. This album also includes "Kein Trink Wasser" ("no drinking water" in German).
  • Their fourth album, In Sides includes "The Girl With The Sun In Her Head", which was recorded using Greenpeace's mobile solar power generator CYRUS, "Dŵr Budr" ("dirty water" in Welsh) and "P.E.T.R.O.L.".
  • The track "You Lot" on the Blue Album, features a confrontational, partially vocoded anti-genetic engineering sample from Christopher Eccleston, originally from the TV two-part series The Second Coming written by Russell T Davies.

• Orbital are sometimes confused with The Orb, a similarly named band that has also been very influential in the realm of electronic music. In its early days, The Orb often did remixes of other artists' songs and called the result an "Orbital Mix", but these remixes have nothing to do with the band Orbital. The Orb stopped this practice after Orbital became popular, hoping not to cause any more confusion.

• Tilda Swinton, (The Beach, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), starred in the music video for "The Box".

• The track "Planet of the Shapes" from the band's second eponymous album features a sample from the film Withnail & I, voiced by Paul McGann: "Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day".

• The track "The Moebius" from the band's first eponymous album features samples from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Time Squared". The first sample, voiced by Michael Dorn (Worf) says "There is the theory of the möbius, a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop". There is also a shorter utterance by LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge): "when we reach that point, whatever happened will happen again".

• The Michael Dorn clip was reused in "Time Becomes", the first track on the band's second eponymous album, a stereo sound experiment along the lines of Steve Reich's Come Out.

• Orbital's famous head-mounted flashlights may not be original to them. Spanish techno performer Chimo Bayo wore head-mounted flashlights in his shows since 1988 [2], and in an interview in MTV Spain in 2006 [3] (minute 1:33) claimed that the English started using the same flashlights after him.

• The ticking sample used on "Walk Now" is sampled from/recreated from the ticking sound of traffic lights alerting pedestrians that it is safe to cross the road.

[edit] Selected discography

[edit] Albums

• Orbital (aka the Green Album) (1991) #71 UK
• Orbital 2 (aka the Brown Album) (May 1993) #28 UK
• Snivilisation (1994) #4 UK
• In Sides (1996) #5 UK
• The Middle of Nowhere (1999) #4 UK, #191 US
• The Altogether (2001) #11 UK
• Back to Mine (DJ Mix album) (2002)
• Work 1989-2002 (Singles/Rarities Collection) (2002) #36 UK
• Octane (OST) (October 2003)
• Blue Album (June 2004) #44 UK
• Halcyon (Best Of) (2005)

[edit] Singles/EPs

• "Chime" (1990) #17 UK
• "Omen" (1990) #46 UK
• "Satan (III EP)" (1991) #31 UK
• "Midnight/Choice" (1991)
• "Mutations" EP (1992) #24 UK
• "Radiccio" EP (1992) #37 UK
• "Lush" (1993) #43 UK
• "Peel Session/Diversions" (1994)
• "Are We Here?" (1994) #33 UK
• "Belfast/Wasted" (1995) #53 UK
• "Times Fly" (1995)
• "The Box" (1996) #11 UK
• "Satan Live" (1996) #3 UK
• "The Saint" (1997) #3 WK
• "Style" (1999) #13 UK
• "Nothing Left" (1999) #32 UK
• "Beached" (In collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti) (2000) #36 UK
• "Funny Break (One is Enough)" (2001) #21 UK
• "Illuminate" 12" Only (2001)
• "Rest"/"Play" EP (2002) #33 UK
• "One Perfect Sunrise/You Lot" (2004) #24 UK

[edit] Paul Hartnoll Singles

• Patchwork Guilt (2006)
• Gloopy (2006)
• Please (2007)

[edit] See also

• 1989 in music

[edit] External links

• loopz.co.uk - official web site
• Orbital at MusicBrainz
• Orbital discography
• DMoz.org category on Orbital
• Orbital - profile with band bio, discography and album reviews.
• Orbital at Discogs
• Orbital at Last.fm