Today I found myself in the shower listening to the second half of Wonky (2012). Wonky is Orbital’s previous Last Album (it was their second, and they’re going on tour again soon). The second half – or actually, the second half of the Deluxe Edition, which is what I have – is basically an hour-long Greatest Hits Of Orbital Megamix, as performed live in Australia a couple years before. I kept on having to remind myself that the shower is not a good place to have an impromptu Orbital Dance Party as a way to get a little exercise.
The first half? An hour of new Orbital. And really, it’s more Orbital, straight from the Orbital generator that lives inside the heads of the Hartnoll brothers. Start with a loop, play it a few times, vary it a little, then repeat that whole set a few times while bringing in a new loop on top of it. Fade out old loops over time, until you start seeding new loops and the composition comes to a start. Every once in a while there are words, but not many – mostly the Hartnolls just want to get a groove on, and keep it going for a while.
So the question then becomes: what is the quality of their new set of loops on hand in 2012, versus the classic set of loops that have been pleasing ears since as far back as their 1991 debut album?
But that question begs its own question: does it even matter if any of the new crop of loops is any good, when you have the Hartnolls picking up their classic loops and bringing to them all the things they’ve learnt over twenty years of making pleasing loops, putting them together in pleasing ways, and watching the crowd as they put these loops together live?
And that brings up another question: they’ve released their first single from the new album. And they’re going on tour again. If I go see them, am I volunteering to be some tiny part of the process of making the next album? I mean I’ll probably buy it, especially if they repeat Wonky’s formula of “an hour of new loops, and an hour of Greatest Orbital Hits Dance Party Megamix”. Maybe more focused on their middle albums; I’m dreaming of a 20min hybrid of P.E.T.R.O.L., Wonky, and Beezlebeat, myself. (But it looks like they’re not visiting the US on this tour, and honestly I can’t blame them right now.)
At any rate: I’ve been listening to the first half of Wonky while writing this, and, to use the current vernacular:
Also, “Beezledub”, the next preantepenultimate new track on Wonky, is a pretty good set of bangin’ dance loops. And there are some good deep drone focus loops on this too. So hey, if you’re not already stocked up on Orbital loops, I don’t think it’d be a bad place to start with Orbital. It says “here is where we are at the end of about two decades of music, and here’s where we began”, in a way rather suited to their endlessly-looping compositional structures. Especially given that the last new track is called “Where Is It Going?” and stops extremely abruptly.