Orbital

One wonders whether some unsuspecting buyer, perhaps an overly purist raver or an audiophile convinced that music only sounds right on vinyl, ever fell victim to the little traps the Hartnoll brothers laid out along the tracklist of their second album. It's tempting to imagine someone marching back to their trusted record shop demanding a replacement copy, thrown off by the crackles that Orbital deliberately inserted at the start of “Planet Of The Shapes”, mocking devotees of the 33rpm format. Or perhaps someone was left disoriented finding, right at the album's opening, the very same Star Trek sample — albeit without the phaser effect this time — that had introduced the opening track of their previous record. We can't know whether the two brothers from Sevenoaks genuinely meant to fool anyone, but what's certain is that, even in the guise of a joke, there was an absolute need to signal change, to take a stance against a paradigm that had become too limiting, one to be rethought and recalibrated without delay.

The second album, titled “Orbital” in Europe and “Orbital 2” in the United States, but immediately nicknamed the “Brown Album” after the dominant colour of its cover (as opposed to the acid-green tones of the debut's artwork), arrives presenting a duo whose sound has been almost entirely overhauled, retaining only a faint impression of what came before. Not that in the four years since the release of “Chime”, one of acid-house's classics (successful enough to earn them, in rather peculiar fashion, a slot on the Top Of The Pops stage), the two brothers had stood still, content to repeat the same formula ad libitum. After all, the rave scene itself, of which Orbital had been protagonists more or less from the start, had undergone major transformations over time, feeling the need to break away from its initial expressive monolith in favour of a broader range of references and a more varied compositional palette. Rehashing the more linear, maximalist recipe of the first album — even though it had been perfectly in step with the narcotic, bombastic attitude of the scene's early years — would have proven a fatal mistake, the kind capable of derailing an entire career. But the pair had long been prepared to rise to the challenge.

Beyond the acid culture of the rave parties scattered across England (which soon spread like wildfire across the rest of Europe), by the early Nineties the electronic scene, both at home and abroad, had already turned its gaze towards other horizons, engaging with new imaginaries and fresh perspectives. On one hand, the sonic universe forged in Bristol, which would shortly lead to the explosion of the trip-hop phenomenon; on the other, the pivotal ambient-techno releases by Biosphere, Irresistible Force and, above all, Aphex Twin, highlighted the need for new languages, for an expressive research placing concepts such as complexity, dynamics and atmosphere in the spotlight — all matters that the “intelligent” movement would soon make its own.

It's a composite scenario, utterly impossible to reduce to a common denominator - and precisely for that reason, brimming with potential, with an impressive creative flexibility. Immersed in such a stimulating environment, the Hartnoll brothers promptly respond to the call and begin to move away from the granitic edge of their early productions, embracing a more elastic vision whose guiding lines still take the duo's origins into account, but which overall present a more elusive, evocative framework, branching off in multiple directions. The "revolution", in short, starts well in advance.

One track in particular represents the real turning point for the two brothers: dedicated to their mother, for years dependent on the near-homonymous tranquilizer, "Halcyon" becomes the key through which the pair opens up new perceptual doors, discovering the power of nuance and a greater gradualness in handling composition and rhythmic patterns. Even more, it's the vehicle that leads them to be seduced by the power of the human voice (no matter how sampled or processed), as well as by the hybridization possibilities offered by a more fluid, organic instrumental setup.

The vocal line of "It's A Fine Day", courtesy of Kirsty Hawkshaw, the alluring voice of Opus III, is then run in reverse and strengthened in its dreamlike qualities, becoming the centrepiece of a constantly evolving track, in which hazy hints of classical guitar alternate with creeping trance constructions and ethereal vocal layers (this time taken from "Leave It" by Yes), supporting the piece's floating dimension. It was hard to imagine anything like this, such an expansive and open sense of progression, especially from someone who had chosen a moniker evoking the ring road around London, significant as the primary home of the early raves.

Enthusiasm nonetheless makes itself felt, and the single, despite its considerable length (over eleven minutes), breaks into the top 40, giving Orbital the chance to push even further, laying the groundwork for an even more elaborate language with which to deepen their growing interest in daring textures and more unusual combinations. After a handful of quick EPs, aimed nonetheless at a niche audience, in May 1993 the Hartnoll outfit's brown album finally hits record store shelves, sweeping everything else aside thanks to its evident ambition and a deeply overhauled artistic profile, backed by an almost unmatched versatility.

It's true that the competition (with due exceptions) wasn't yet especially fierce over the long haul, yet "Brown Album" immediately established itself as a paradigm, both in the way it structured its tracks and, above all, in how it arranged them within the tracklist, in a flow that carries the club dimension into the album format and reveals, with a few bold moves, a progressive streak. In seeking to unite the two opposite poles of their output - the sophisticated alchemy of the post-"Green Album" era and the more vertical impact of their early work - the two found the ideal balance of their path.

Aside from the opening and closing tracks, entrusted precisely to vocal samples doubled through the phasing technique, the remaining songs are among the highest and most effective fusions of mind and body, a good hour of interstellar journeys and evocative settings explored at a dancing pace, made even more vivid by intricate rhythmic detailing. The eight tracks become malleable material, the vessel through which to channel an impeccable compositional synthesis, a tangram that takes on a different shape each time while starting from shared premises. "Planet Of The Shapes" (renamed "Planet Of The Tapes" for the cassette edition) makes this plain: beyond the sly trick played on more demanding listeners, it proves to be a dazzling nine-and-a-half-minute mini-epic, winding between fleeting cinematic samples, more frantic breakbeat sections, esoteric Indian-flavoured passages, and ambient-techno-textured reprises, all riding a pulsing bassline that is, in the end, the track's true thread. This is a device that becomes even more evident in the following run of four tracks, all bound by a similar rhythmic pattern onto which compositions differing each time in mood and intent are grafted: their uninterrupted succession, much like a dj set, decisively enhances their narrative potential.

Split into two parts, "Lush" lives up to the meaning of its title, showing the more lush, seductive side of the Orbital sound. The first part unfolds through refined synthetic weaves, a swarm of old-school electro effects supporting a delicate instrumental melody, interspersed with sparser technoid pulses and peculiar atmospheric bridges. In the second part, the ambient elements shift from the synthetic realm to the vocal one, entrusting hazy female samples with the task of taming the decisive acid streaks of the backing track. It's an acidity kept in check only up to a point, one the two brothers have no wish to hide, since it remains a constitutive part of their complex sonic alchemy. "Impact (The Earth Is Burning)" indeed brings the greater sonic compactness of their early days back to the fore, transfiguring its narcotic charge into a kaleidoscope embracing jazz sinuousness, effectively anticipating some of the solutions of the later big beat movement.

As the sequence draws to a close, "Remind" (a reworking of the "Mind The Bend The Mind" remix, made for Meat Beat Manifesto's "Mindstream") tones down the external influences without simplifying things, standing out instead as one of the most striking moments on the whole record, exploiting the recursive force of the synthesizers to build elegant emotional scenery.

Although not part of the progression mentioned above, the remaining three tracks don't loosen their grip - if anything, they expand the record's sonic palette even further, also contributing in large part to its actual legacy. "Walk Now....", between didgeridoo and samples of Australian pedestrian-crossing sounds (used as an effective restart halfway through the track), pushes the Hartnolls' feverish synthetic web toward globalist shores, in a fusion that best sums up the dual nature of their sound. "Monday" pirouettes around a soulful piano loop, with the dense dynamism of the surrounding electronics hopelessly influenced by it, ending up tamed, even melodic, in its use of spirited descending scales.

With the reworking of "Halcyon", already marked out by its "+ On + On" title to underline the difference, Orbital, as well as closing out a wondrous octet of tracks, cement their aesthetic and stylistic stance in one of their greatest masterpieces, an exploration that has secured their name among the absolute heavyweights of global electronic music. Trimmed by almost two minutes compared to the original version, with a fuller, more defined instrumental palette (especially in the bass and keyboards), Kirsty Hawkshaw's finely chiselled vocal lines are almost amplified in their communicative power, thanks to a rhythmic design planned with extreme precision and keyboard lines that heighten the composition's atmospheric dimension. It's perhaps not even that drastic a reworking, but more than enough for this beguiling techno adventure to travel far, landing in unexpected territories (the "Mean Girls" soundtrack, to cite the most famous case) and opening doors previously inaccessible to them.

Their glorious appearance at the Glastonbury festival in June 1994, broadcast live on television, would then allow the pair to make their fabled leap in stature, bringing their techno mélange into the homes of an enormous audience and also enabling the entire rave scene to come out into the open, ready to aim for far more significant stages.

Important awards, commercially successful albums and appearances on the most disparate soundtracks would follow. None of it, however, would have been possible without "Brown Album", its sophisticated stylistic fusions, the depth of its sonic textures. Beyond limitations and orthodoxies, a work of beguiling - even ironic - complexity.

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04/11/2018