Look what I found. A thread about Orbital.

What can I expect?

1) In "Spare Parts Express", when the huge cathedral organs flood in as the beats drop away, and then the whole thing smashes back into action again with something approach pomp-psychosis.

2) The searing synth riffs in "Know Where To Run", especially the high one that they only use once.

3) The entirety of "Nothing Left", which is just hugely, indescribably awesome. Especially the breakdown at the end with the fantastic cross-hatching of the vocals.

It's amazing how this record gets everything so right that the new album gets so wrong.

Fuck you, Southy, now I have to listen to it again.

I can't think of a song by a band I love as much as Orbital that I just loathe as much as that one.

NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE

Middle Of Nowhere is now my joint second-favourite Orbital album. The graph now goes liek this:

In Sides >> Snivilisation/Middle Of Nowhere >> Brown >>>> Blue >> Green >>>> The Altogether

And no fucking way is Blue better than Green. Maybe because you UKers didn't get the singles with your version, but our version has both "Chime" and "Belfast," thus automatically making it superior to every Orbital album besides In Sides and Snivilisation.

Also THERE IS NO PLATONIC ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE, ONLY PERSONAL PREFERENCE.

X-post!

I didn't say I didn't think it was that good, I just said I thought it was short on hooks, there's a difference.

Acid Pants is fantastic - the problem isn't even the sample itself its that the sample is overused. But I got past that pretty quickly. I love Bath Time as well, but then I like childish plinky melodies like that.

The moment when One Perfect Sunrise *really* worked for me was at Glastonbury (which surely it was written for), partly because it seemed chunkier and bassier. Also I had a grumbling Stevem next to me which made it funnier.

have you heard Sparks "Lil Beethoven"? - most of the songs on it sound like a looped vocal sample anyway!

When they're "Belfast" and "Chime," hell yes they fucking do.

I never, repeat NEVER listen to Green as a whole, and I'm not fussed by "Chime" overly to be honest either. Green is like a dodgy compilation.

even without those two, Green would still be pretty close to Brown for me--"Desert Storm," "The Mobeius," "Choice," "Satan"...it's all good stuff. It doesn't flow that well but it sounds like a singles collection of this really awesome bleep-and-bass group. That's cool too.

"Chime" fucking destroys "Halcyon" for me. I could listen to that chime riff for practically all eterntity.

Also, if you are looking at the albums as proper albums and not arbitrary sequences of songs recorded during a particular year, there is absolutely no way that _Green_ can compare to anything else Orbital released. The album is ill-conceived and doesn't flow well PLUS most of the tracks on it are DESTROYED by individual tracks on ALL of their later albums. _Blue_ is basically _Green done correctly; there are songs on _Green_ I like more than most of the songs on _Blue_ but overall the songs on _Blue_ work together better and the entire album flows in a way impossible for _Green_ due to the way it was put together.

...

do you also like "World in Motion" and "Round and Round" more than "Temptation" and "Blue Monday"?

Actually, considering your favorite NO albums, you very well might. Eh.

Also, if you are looking at the albums as proper albums and not arbitrary sequences of songs recorded during a particular year, there is absolutely no way that _Green_ can compare to anything else Orbital released.

yeah, I'd agree with that. Like I said, awesome singles comp, not album.

But when so many of the tracks on Blue make me feel more than a little bit queasy, I really don't care if it flows or not. Save "You Lot," "What Happens Next" and "One Perfect Sunrise" for best-of mixes and jet the rest (and WHN didn't even make the final cut, did it? Terrible).

Also Green has Oolaa, Midnight and High Rise which always get overlooked. That spiralling high pitched loop in High Rise is marvellous.

(This will make no sense to people outside the UK)

???

"Ooolaa" is pretty good, not a big "Midnight" fan, and I don't think we got "High Rise" in the states.

And though it doesn't even come close to the big two, "Choice" is pretty fabulous. I'm a sucker for dance music with angry political vocal rants, though.

No, I don't.

I just picked The Blue Album yesterday and I'm kind of disappointed. With only 9 tracks I was hoping for some of them to be lengthier (a la InSides). Only 3 of them I felt were really quality songs (Transient, Pants & You Lot) and Acid Pants is the most irritating track they've ever done. One Perfect Sunrise (with it's '94 Chemical Brothers-esque title) would've been great 10 years ago, but now just reminds me of the music from Gladiator!

All in all - a let down of a final release from one of my all time favourite groups.

"Belfast" is the most gorgeous, tear-jerking thing they ever did, save perhaps "Attatched" or the first minute of "Way Out" or the last four minutes of "Out There Somewhere". I put it #3 on my 90's ballot.

I can't fathom this "Chime" hating. What do you people have against euphoria, anyway?

YEAH WHAT

In fact the live tracks I have on my In Sides bonus disc ("Satan" running into "Impact (The Earth Is Burning)" running into "Chime") eliminates the need to listen to any of Orbital's pre-Brown recorded work.

-- Forksclovetofu (forksclovetof...), October 13th, 2004 9:13 PM.

Fuck yeah it is. Orbital is the best music to run to ever. Oooh I used to love running in the dark in the suburbs to the sound of the entire Box EP...I can hear it in my head right now.

The more I liste to this the more tempted I am to say it's my fabvourite Orbital record, if favourite means the one you listen to and enjoy most.

Yes! I wrote something a long time ago about how the percussion on "Spare Parts Express" and "Nothing Left" was really quite unusual - not house, not techno, not breakbeat, not IDM, but somewhere in between all of these (and kinda like an update of early nineties' 808 States'syncopated house rhythms). The percussion on "Nothing Left" makes me think of an enormous machine unpacking and repacking thousands of boxes really quickly.