Photo #1 to #21 - Loopz
Review Contribution #1 - DogSolitude
Review Contribution #2- YH

Review #1 - DogSolitude
Having just completed a 309 mile round trip to see Orbital in Wolverhampton, all I can say is that they were absolutely awesome. I won't spoil it for others by disclosing the setlist, but lets just say that there were a few surprises in there. I must admit that the Civic has an excellent sound system and last night was a true test and Phil and Paul took it to the extremes with bass that shook your ribcage and made the air vibrate... It was cool to meet some of the others in the Loopz meetup at the Little Civic and a big hello to all who were there, especially Steve. If you're going to see them on the Altogether tour, you will not be disappointed and if it's your first time, you're in for a real treat... Cheers, Dog

Review #2 - The Times

The fraternal duo Paul and Phil Hartnoll are one of the few surviving electronic acts to have honed their sound in the wilderness before rave culture exploded in the late 1980s. Even now, despite a solid following among dance fans, the pair stand apart from fashion in a parallel sonic universe of their own devising.
Their sixth and most conventionally song-based album to date, The Altogether, has attracted cool reviews in some quarters. In fairness it lacks the bite and range of their best work, but the live arena has always been their strongest suit. And thus the brothers proved once more on Sunday, when their latest tour reached a packed Civic Hall in Wolverhampton.

Crouched in semi-darkness behind what looked like the wire-tangled innards of the Mir space station, Orbital delivered two hours of sensory overload and mounting excitement.

The duo’s increasing fondness for vocals has not been allowed to compromise their signature blend of preprogrammed electronics overlaid with improvised textures and live keyboards. Sampled snippets of guest singers were generously deployed, from the woozy celestial sighs of the early crowd-pleaser The Girl with the Sun in Her Head to the high-pitched choir effects of the recent Top 30 single Funny Break. Even the more structured lyrical warbles of the neo-folk crooner David Gray on Illuminate, pinpointed by many reviewers as the album’s weakest link, were transformed by technological tinkering into a sublime instrument in their own right. This proved to be a triumphant makeover, elevating a pedestrian album track into a pulsating widescreen anthem.

Unlike most of their techno peers, the Hartnolls have managed to inject a rich streak of nostalgic Englishness into a music generally associated with gleaming global futurism. The sampled chants of the late Ian Dury in Oi were one example of this colloquial quality, but it became most apparent on their climactic cover version of the Doctor Who title music. Commissioned by the BBC, this was less a remake than an affectionate deconstruction of the famous television theme, rebuilding the original’s clunky throb into a bristling alien soundscape of industrial thuds and fizzing keyboards. Hearty cheers greeted this witty recontextualising of childhood viewing habits.

With almost no serious lulls all night, the brothers maintained their euphoric momentum right up to the grand finale. Then the time-honoured live tracks Impact and Chime were unleashed to a sea of skyward-pointing arms and gyrating torsos. Despite acknowledging a debt to the peaking piano rolls and thumping four-four rhythms of early house music, these tracks remained unmistakably Orbital-esque in character. And fashionable or not, the Hartnolls are still one of the unique and most reliably exciting spectacles in modern pop.