Times fly: an appreciation of Orbital

My first memory of Orbital is the sight of two 20-somethings standing awkwardly behind piles of synthesizers and mixers set up on two fold-out tables of the kind normally found in car boot sales or community halls.

The location is the Top of the Pops studio. Paul and Phil Hartnoll are dressed like they’ve come straight from doing community service and the trademark torch glasses have yet to make an appearance. Nothing’s plugged in, of course – like every other act on the show at the time, they’ve been forced to mime by the producers. Not entirely sure what to do, the brothers make little effort to mime, instead pretending to push buttons at infrequent intervals while a studio full of teenagers claps and whoops as if being made to do so at gunpoint. Orbital look embarrassed.

To their right, a woman in a baggy silver jacket gyrates like she’s been hooked up to the mains. She’s at least getting into the spirit of things, even if she’s been hired by Top of the Pops to add to the ‘performance’. She dances like she’s just jumped on stage and is enjoying her moment before security drag her away.

It’s March 1990 and, if anything, the Hartnoll brothers have been caught off guard. ‘Chime’, a track which by their own admission was knocked up in a hurry on their dad’s old tape recorder before they headed out to the pub, has unexpectedly hit the top 20 and its makers have become reluctant pop stars, thrust into the world of Top of the Pops, Smash Hits and Bruno Brookes.

With its haunting, stabbing string refrain (reminiscent of ‘Strings of Life’) and choppy rhythm, ‘Chime’ immediately stood out from other chart entries at the time. It eventually found its way onto side four (I say that because I had the double cassette version) of Now That’s What I Call Music 17, sandwiched neatly between Adamski’s ‘Killer’ and coffee table house also-rans Tongue N Cheek’s ‘Tomorrow’. Needless to say, side four got worn to shreds by my 10-year-old self.

Anyway, I’m not going to give you a potted history of Orbital – you’ve got Google for that. Put those fingers to good use.

What I will say, however, is that, for me, Orbital were unique. Like Aphex Twin, they’d pretty much become their own otherworldly genre. Were they techno? Were they breaks? Were they trance? They were none of those things and yet all of them at once. They defied categorisation, just carrying on with their own thing with little or no regard for what their peers were doing.

They built up a fiercely loyal live following (their 1994 Glastonbury performance remains a career-defining moment), assisted by a dazzling array of lights and visuals, and not forgetting the torch specs, of course.  I was fortunate enough to catch the brothers Hartnoll live on one and a half occasions. I say ‘half’ because the first time was at the Sonar festival in Barcelona in 2009 where we stepped into the aircraft-hanger sized arena halfway through their set (to the opening lines of ‘Satan’, no less) thanks to an irate taxi driver who somehow misheard “Sonar, please” for “take us to a beach 10 miles away even though it’s midnight and therefore pitch black”.

The second time was at the O2 Academy in Birmingham as part of the ‘Wonky’ tour, towards the end of 2012. The crowd was largely men in their late 30s and early 40s (many of whom I imagine also remember that early Top of the Pops appearance) but the atmosphere was pure electricity.  The mind-warping visuals were present and correct, as were the cheeky samples laid playfully over the top of various classics (my particular favourite being The Carpenters’ ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ over the main synth riff on ‘Are We Here?’, complete with the lyrics projected onto a screen). It was not only the LOUDEST gig I have ever been to, but probably one of the best by several million light years.

Whether I’ll ever get to enjoy the Orbital live experience again remains to be seen – they’ve split up before, after all, so there’s still a glimmer of hope that this parting of ways isn’t permanent. And if it is, then they’ve left behind a truly outstanding musical legacy (albeit one which will go completely over the heads of the Guetta crowd).

Thanks for the music, guys. Be sure to visit our planet again soon.