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Where Time Becomes A Loop

Orbital – The Green Album Reissue. 

Available Now on London Records with UK Tour dates April / May 2024

Orbital's 'Green'  Remixed
Available now in all formats
inc. tape cassette!

1991, music turned on its head and electronic music became the dance sound.  Orbital took off under the initial influence of Kraftwerk.  Where were Kraftwerk not an influence?  If someone had a plug-in electronic device that made noises that could be mixed into music, whether rhythm, melody or repeated affects, this was music straight from the power plant.

 

A mum and dad move out to run a pub, leaving two brothers to a live in a five-bedroom house, what could possibly go wrong?  Thank goodness, in the late C20^th making your own entertainment in the spirit of Punk DIY was still a thing.  The brothers Hartnoll ran a near permanent house party for themselves and their friends.  They made the most of their freedom, saving up to buy electronic kit, nothing too extravagant, just what they thought was needed to add something to help sculpt the sonic stew they were putting through the blender in the old family home. 

All this experimentation led to Chime, a track that caught the ear of some big wigs and Pete Tong signed them to London, although they several other offers, ridiculous offers. 

Here are the brothers H. (with a mystery dancer) on Top Of The Pops in a shortened version of Chime...

The outcome of all this housework was Orbital’s debut album, simply headed up Orbital, albeit with a distinctive green cover .  The tracks were being laid down just as CNN broke into live-streaming the 1990-91 Gulf War, which sparked Orbital’s track Desert Storm, composed on the day that the war hit the TV screens and the streets of Bagdad. 

 

Orbital’s 'Green' album, is said by its creators, to contain ‘schoolboy errors.’ but point me to those in this 2024 re-issue.  I am listening to this music for the first time, repeatedly.  The opening track, Moebius develops step by step, like Chamber music might.  I grasp that as each sound is introduced to the track, it becomes is a tasty precursor to the next flavour, building eager anticipation, until the percussion takes off and becomes the music itself.

 

When we reach that point, whatever happened, will happen again, the voice on this number intones, but that is to forget that with every repetition something new is taking place, every time.  It is the cumulative effect of repetition, repetition, repetition that forms a new listening experience, each loop is not received in the same way as the previous.  It can't be, as time has moved on. 

Rock magazine, Q, then  at the peak of its powers, gave Orbital's first release the lowest possible scoring, exposing both the limitations of five-point scoring systems and the established Music Biz being deaf to difference. Orbital were new to the popular music media, but the brothers had been part of and instrumental in shaping the sound of what was happening outside London’s mainstream music-biz bubble. Raves, squat parties, parties where the music was home-made, mixed up, DJ’d on the spot. These parties were happening by definition where agents of mainstream media were not.

The album got the kind of reception granted by Tony Blackburn to punk rock, with his ‘ignore it and it will go away’ arrogance. The ignoring got more difficult with the success of the breakthrough 12” hit, Chime.  The track appears on the digital remix album in various versions, not least in the exceptional live release and a secret gig recording.  Orbital had lift-off when Tong signed them to London Records, spotting the talent and that this track encapsulated the sound of a new dance era.

Listening today, it is not hard to grasp why this album was so important at that time.  But all the ideas I hear today on Orbital’s Green re-issued album, have been subsumed in the ocean of electronic music that has swollen since the 1990s, fed by the easy availability of sound gadgetry and programs that have made making music an accessible activity for those untrained in stringed instruments. How might it be received today by a new audience, I wonder.  I am sure that the lasting quality of this music will shine through. 

 

The value of this album is indisputable. Thirty-five (!) years ago, the brothers were right there, surfing the first wave of the rave scene.  Secret gigs, impromptu raves, cheap travel and the move away from traditional lads’ opiate-entertainment of football.  The European Cup Final between Barcelona and Sampdoria was played at the old Wembley Stadium that year and you could get in on the night, I did.  Which showed where that was heading at the time.  Football, after the Bradford Fire and the heavy-handed and complacent policing that contributed directly to the Hillsborough Disaster, had driven young men elsewhere, anywhere else, which for many was the beauty of the rave music and dance scene. 

 

By 1991 the joy of collective gathering was no longer the preserve of the urban, as fields and woodland in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Essex became as attractive and accessible as a neighbourhood warehouse party.  The M25 had become the conduit for country house burglars, intercontinental lorries and ravers. Meeting at a pre-arranged service station, or car park, convoys of party people headed off to secret destinations where they could dance, watch sunsets, sunrises and any cosmic happenings in between.  It was as if the Battle of Beanfield in 1985 had never happened. 

 

Live and DJ sets featuring “the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” was to be written into UK legislation as the rationale for confiscation and destruction of sound systems, arrest and subsequent fines and imprisonment.  Thatcher and her successors, who had already worked to smash the miners, the trades union movement and dismantled state ownership of public utilities, now turned to pulling apart the rave scene that operated on large tracts of land, ultimately owned by the Lords and Ladies of England.  

 

Responding to the hostile attitude of the authorities, raves went back into towns and cities into clubs. Having musical recordings of those pre-Criminal Justice and Public Order Act days became a thing.  If you couldn’t get to a field in Hampshire anymore, certainly playing an Orbital LP, or saving up for time at an official festival, which often meant Glastonbury, where you could see them perform live, were the options, (those, or Ibiza).

In 1994 Orbital played a set at Glastonbury that is labelled one of the all-time greatest gigs.  Thirty years on, the Orbital pair have been back out on tour until early May, 2024.  The brothers have already played this year at Coachella in Indio, California.  They will be at Bearded Theory’s 15^th festival in the National Forest, in the geographical heart of England, then will be on the Glastonbury Park Stage, (June 26^th / 30^th), Latitude in Suffolk (July 25^th / 28^th) before winding up their current commitments at Dreamland Margate on 14^th September, which also offers a post-gig rave with Leftfield in the Margate Lido complex.  

 

Orbital’s first album was successful because it contains the feel of the initial rave scene, when “Illegal” raves were not illegal, just a huge adventure.  Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA / e) was the thing.  Cheaper than alcohol, easier to carry and distribute, prosocial, with mildly psychedelic effects, these empathogens were all the rage, although occasional neurotoxin catastrophic consequences are possible and were widely publicised when they did.  

 

The collective joy of people gathering together in large numbers to share the existential experience of just being together, needed someone to supply the dance music.  This was sound-tracked by performers like Orbital, before the floppy discs were out and long before the 12” vinyl copies were available.  Orbital expanded the sonic landscape previously inhabited by rock-based, free festival bands on the impromptu road circuit, such as Ozric Tentacles and the crazy, free-styling space rock of Gong.  

 

This Orbital re-issue of ‘Green’, remixed by Phil & Paul Hartnoll, is simply refreshing.  For many the Green album will bring back some intense memories. If you have your original copy still, well done, but for those who haven’t, or who want to dip into the past of the future of dance, this is excellent.  The remixed album is out again on vinyl, CD and cassette for those old Convoy vans and buses still functioning.

 

Orbital’s ‘Green album’ reissue has been well-received elsewhere.  As well it should be!  It is a grower and a keeper.

 

MOJO:             Game-changing *****

 

UNCUT:           Orbital’s self-titled 1991 debut holds up extremely well decades later” 8/10

 

Record Collector: A vital document of a DIY head-space forming from the influences of industrial Sheffield, punk, rave and more. ****

 

The Sunday Times:  . The Hartnoll brothers’ 1991 debut is rightly regarded as a game changing and prophetic record that paved the way for countless other electronic bands.  Reissue of The Week

Reissue formats include a 4LP Box Set, 4CD Box Set, Black and Coloured 2LP, 2CD, and Cassette, pre-order here. All tracks have been fully remastered by Orbital’s Phil and Paul Hartnoll for the very first time.

Independent Record shops may still have  limited edition coloured vinyl LPs issued for Record Store Day 2024 

~

 

Spencer Ide

29^th April 2024