Isle of Wight Festival gig - USB wristbands?

[muzsky mouse]

Gig is a little way off, but was wondering if any plans to record the Isle of Wight Festival concert so can be bought on a USB wristband?

I went to one of the Brixton Academy gigs last year and the wristband recording was first rate, it would be great if the same facility was available again.

Many thanks.

[Loopz]

I was told that there would be no more USB wristbands i'm afraid. Whether that changes in the future is hard to say

[muzsky mouse]

Really that's a shame it's so good to be able to relive the gig at home - the Brixton Academy one from last year gets better with every listen!

Any chance of persuading Paul and Phil otherwise?

Also hope isn't a stupid question but will it be a different set to the shows last summer/autumn? Don't want to tell the guys how to do their job but would be ace to hear some more stuff from Snivilisation - Kein Trink Wasser, Are We Here and so on.

Must be hard for them as they only have so much time in their slot but such a rich back catalogue to choose from!

Many thanks.

[Loopz]

i dont think they will listen to me or else they would be performing 3 hours set in Bham every saturday

No idea about set list (i never like to know myself) but it's worth noting that it takes a LONG time to prepare every single track for the live environment. It's not as simple as chosing a series of tracks and then playing them. i'm sure you already know this but just in case...

[muzsky mouse]

I didn't, so though the gigs aren't for some time they will be preparing the tracks now? How long does it take to prepare each track? When I've seen them perform I've always wondered how they go about the preparation/performance - in London they seemed to have a pad of sheet music behind them that they were referring to and turning over.

Sorry about all the questions!

See what u mean, I live near London but I'd come to Birmingham every time if they agreed to do that, going to IOW festival but thinking of Glade as well now so can see them twice! Spose they'd be pulled this way and that if they agreed to all the fans' requests lol!

Is good to have surprise aspect for sure, would only say that I'm more keen on the brown album to Insides era than on the post Middle of Nowhere stuff, it's still good but not quite in same league, don't know if you'd agree.

Cheers

[tcb2000]

Hello Mr Mouse!

The way Orbital live sets work is that all the songs are programmed on sequencers, which are bits of kit that tell a keyboard what note to play and when. All those keyboards they have on stage are playing live according to what the sequencer tells them. There's nothing on tape. Before 2004, Orbital used an old fashioned sequencer from the late 80s/90s, which wasn't terribly user friendly, but Paul knew his way around it enough to chop and change bits of the performance as and when the show required it. I'd imagine those sequencers (Alesis MMT-8, if you're interested!) had an awful lot of Orbital tracks on them - but each of those tracks would have been painstakingly played or keyed into the sequencer, edited and arranged. I would imagine a complex track could take weeks or even months to get right.

Post-2004, the new live set is using a computer running a bit of software called Ableton Live, which is controlled by a couple of Lemur control surfaces (if you look on the news page, you'll see pics of the synths before last year's tour, and you can see one picture with something that looks like a digital photo frame in it - that's the Lemur). I'd imagine being software based might speed up the programming phase slightly (things like copying and pasting a section of a track are probably easier) but each track would still have to be programmed into the computer. And whilst I'm sure Orbital have backups of the sequencer data from the old days, it might not be possible/worthwhile to use that data, meaning a lot of the old tracks can't just be played, they'd have to be reprogrammed. And that's a lot of work!

I'd imagine the sheet music you saw was program sheets for the large analog synth at the back of the rig - I also saw someone come on stage to twiddle with it and set it up for the next track on a few occasions. That's someone making sure that synthesiser is set up to make the correct sounds - some synths you can do that digitally, some you have to do manually!

Hope that's all clear, I've tried to guess how things work as best I can without too many assumptions!

Rich

[muzsky mouse]

Thx Rich, it's good to hear how the live perfomances are put on as it's certainly not obvious by watching!

When they are actually performing what do they need to do to keep things going?

Also with the older tracks in last gig they played Belfast, The Moebius and so on, from first album so surely Snivilisation stuff wouldn't be out of question? Not trying to tell them what to play of course!

Surprised by wristband decision as well - I know they're not in it for the money but must be a spinner on that front even if is a hassle to organise!

Many thanks

[memly]

Good post Rich! Cleared a lot of things up for me too!