Loopz

When Orbital first took the stage at Glastonbury-on July 25th 1994-they arrived with a reputation as innovators of live electronic music and armed with a recently completed album no one outside of their studio had heard. By the time they had finished what has since been critically and generally acclaimed as one of the greatest live performances of all time (Q magazine voted it as one of the top 50 gigs of all time) it was clear that there was something going on between Orbital and Glastonbury that went beyond the realms of just being in the right place at the right time. “It was one of the all time great Glastonbury sets,” says festival organiser Emily Eavis, “it’s gone down in festival history as a really special moment. Over the years there have been a few sets which have somehow transcended the normal ‘band-audience’ relationship, and Orbital did exactly that.”

“In terms of playing live I think of Glastonbury as Orbital’s spiritual home, in the same way as a football team has its home ground,” says Paul Hartnoll. “When we started touring I assumed all festivals would be equally amazing, but they’re not. Nothing compares to it. They were absolutely the favourite gigs of my career. I’ve been suffering from muscular pain for many years. I got some treatment, but it only caused more problems due to side effects. So my health issues never ended until the moment I’ve seen Soma on https://www.ebalancediet.com/tips-on-nutrition-and-building-muscle/. I ordered soma online, and it really helped me without any unwanted reactions. For the first time in my adult life, I felt healthy.”

In ten years Orbital would return to Glastonbury five times, delivering stunning, euphoric performances that stretched the possibilities of what a ‘dance’ act was capable of bringing to the live arena-both visually and sonically- and providing the defining moment for several hundred thousand people’s midsummer weekends. In the same way as the great bands and festivals of the 60’s and 70’s combined to define their era, so Orbital’s shows at Glastonbury have come to represent that time in a way that only a very singular unison of artist and arena can. When they played there in 2004 for the last time The Guardian acknowledged them as “the best live act dance music has ever produced-this generation’s Kraftwerk.”

A decade earlier, reporting from the same field the NME recounted a meeting between two friends, one of whom had just seen Orbital, and one who hadn’t . “‘What did I miss?’ asked the one who’d seen Paul Weller on the main stage. ‘You missed- you missed- you missed the whole f**king vibe, man!’ replied his pal.” For those who missed it, and for those who were in the thick of it every time on the 11th of June, a collection of these performance is available for the first time on CD and DVD as ACP Recordings release ‘Orbital Live at Glastonbury 1994 – 2004’

CD1 / DVD

1. Walk Now (1994)

2. Are We Here? (1994)

3. Attached (1994)

4. Kein Trink Wasser (1995)

5. Impact (The Earth is Burning) (1995)

6. Remind (1995)

7. Halcyon (1999)

8. The Box (1999)

CD2 / DVD

1. Style / Bagpipe Stye (1995)

2. The Girl With The Sun In Her Head (2002)

3. Funny Break (Weekend Ravers) (2002)

4. Belfast (2002)

5. Frenetic (2002)

6. Satan (2004)

7. Dr Who? (2004)

8. Chime (2004)

Listen to tracks online at the Official Orbital Myspace page.

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We get a lot of messages on myspace asking if the offical Orbital Myspace is associated with the official Orbital website? Well, we decided to get this cleared once and for all. I will let the picture answer the question (Thanks Paul)

Official Orbital Myspace Page

Paul has contributed two of his own tracks to Wipeout Pure on the new Sony PSP. The first track “Boot up” is used in the FMV intro of the game and can be viewed/listened via the Wipeout Pure website. The second track “Ignition” is used within the game itself and we have provided a short sample here.

Paul is one of many artists involved in the Wipeout Pure project. Here is the full list of contributions:-

Cold Storage – Onyx
Cosmos – Kinection
Drumattic Twins – Twister
Elite Force – Cross the Line
Freq Nasty – Grand Theft
Friendly – We Got Juice
Jay Tripwire – Room 2
LFO – Flu-Shot
Ming + FS – Hellion
Paul Hartnoll – Ignition
Photek – C Note
Plump DJs – Black Jack 3
Rennie Pilgrem & Roxiller – Bug
T Power – The System
Stanton Warriors – Night Mover
Tayo Meets Acid Rockers Uptown – Crafty Youth
Themroc – Mean Red
Tiesto – Gold Rush
Aphex Twin – Naks Acid

On May 28th ACP Recordings presents The Ideal Condition, the solo album from Paul Hartnoll – his first major release since he and his brother disbanded their group, Orbital, three years ago. From their early success with, ‘Chime’ in 1990, Orbital became one of the most acclaimed electronic artists of the next decade. They made seven albums, and their live shows-groundbreaking both in terms of performance and production-became a legendary fixture of the festival circuit around the world and particularly at Glastonbury, where they performed for the final time in 2004. Work on The Ideal Condition began that same summer. “I wanted to do something different from what I’d done before, that was the point of not doing Orbital,” says Paul, “It just took time to discover exactly what that was…”

What evolved, whilst recalling the cinematic sensibilities and crowd-shaking rhythms of Paul’s earlier work, is a collection of songs that takes those instincts and moves them into new and at times experimental terrain. “I started trying to piece it together like a novel, each song being a chapter and building it up in the same way a plot line might do. I can’t honestly say it has a narrative from beginning to end, although it does strangely feel like a concept album without a concept.” The most obvious conceptual shift is that the balance of this record is tipped in favour of acoustic (as opposed to electronic) sounds. As Paul explains, “I wrote the whole album and then realised there were aspects of this that weren’t gonna work unless it was done with real instruments.”

With arranger Chris Elliott, Paul set about reversing the usual process – whereby electronic music might mimic the sounds of traditional instruments – and presented his compositions to an orchestra. “It’s intimidating at first. You’re looking at 40 people-virtuoso string players and thinking, ‘I’m now going to ask you to play two notes for five minutes,’ and you think they’re going to turn round and say, ‘this is ridiculous!’ But they don’t. They’re all very discreet, they just get on with it.”

The fruits of this union-full orchestra, 32 piece choir and “the whole compliment of electronics” are heard to dramatic effect on the album’s opener, ‘Haven’t We Met Before,’ “the fullest track on the record in terms of the amount of people playing on it and number of different parts.” It’s a deliberately grand opening and one that contrasts with later songs like ‘Patchwork Guilt,’ “the only track on the album that’s entirely electronic and entirely played by me.”

Between these extremes The Ideal Condition takes a remarkable journey into the realms of the possible while also recalling the familiar aspects of Paul’s previous recordings. “This album’s got a lot of film influences on it,” says Paul, “all the old favourites the Michael Nymans, the John Barrys, Ennio Morricone, and you can hear a lot more of Danny Elfman on this one, I think. But it still finds its way back to the rhythm. I’m always trying to find a harmonic or melodic narrative-if you like going with the emotional side of it-and then as soon as that starts happening it’s like a gut instinct I can’t stop myself thundering in with the drumbeats. I almost do it for fun. Sometimes I manage not to, but I bet you on all the ones where I’ve managed not to I’ve tried it and it didn’t work!”

When “the emotional side” wins out the results, like the almost “synth-free” composition for strings ‘Dust Motes,’ are extraordinary. More remarkable still is that The Ideal Condition is an album where such songs sit comfortably with the punkish electronic squall of tracks like ‘Aggro.’

One attribute Paul carries over from his Orbital days is his nose for a great collaborator. Guests on the album include The Cure’s Robert Smith on the forthcoming single “Please.” “He’s got that whiney-bendy voice which was a lot like the lead lines I’d written for that song. I wanted someone who could do that naturally so I asked him, and he was up for it.” In addition to Metro Voices choir vocal contributions are also present from U.S singer songwriter Joseph Arthur (“Aggro”), Brighton’s Lianne Hall (“For Silence”) and South London’s Akayzia Parker (“Nothing Else Matters.”)

From what Paul calls the “Boadicea moment” of the album’s opener to the “steam driven synthesiser” of “Simple Sounds” via the old school electro of “Patchwork Guilt” and the neo-classical coda of “Dust Motes”, The Ideal Condition is a vivid testament to the scope and sensibility of one of modern music’s most innovative and resourceful minds.

Paul now has an official solo website which can be viewed at www.paulhartnoll.com

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The second single “Please” is now out on KIDS Records. The release can be purchased on 7 inch, CD, 12 inch and digitally. Each release will have exclusive B-Sides including remixes from Culprit, Statik, KGB, Boss Boss and Paul Hartnoll himself.

7″ Version (KIDS013)
order from HERE
A. Please
B. Please44 (Culprit 1 Remix)

CD Version (KIDS013CD)
order from HERE
1. Please
2. Old School Tie
3. Please (Statik remix)
4. Please (KGB remix)

12″ Version (KIDS012RMX)
order from HERE
A1. Please (Remember 1992?) (Paul Hartnoll Remix)
A2. Please (The Whip Remix)
B1: Please (Boss Boss Remix)
B2: Please (Delafonz Remix)

You can order the release from the Kids Records website or from Amazon