CD of the week
Okay, Orbital have sampled Dollar on In the Middle of Nowhere (ffrr). It shows an admirable open-mindedness, if you ask me. Not that you’d expect anything less. My favourite Orbital moment is when they whack the chorus of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth through the speakers at their gigs. Wide-open-mindedness is the thing, great rolling prairies of it. They’ve yet to put a foot wrong or double back on themselves.
Orbital are a unique techno duo with neo- classical ambitions but, thankfully, next to zero pretensions. The only reason they’re not rated alongside composers such as Steve Reich and Phillip Glass is that people dance to Orbital’s music rather than stroke their goatees to it.
Orbital haven’t done away with their fluid loops and trademark bleeps. Nor have they made their songs any less intricate, or taken the electronic edge off in any way. But there’s something about Middle Of Nowhere which makes it sound ever so slightly like a rock record, in the best way. Know Where To Run, for instance, really does rock along like the proverbial bastard. I Don’t Know You People is closer to The Young Gods if anything, with fuzz guitar taking vicious slices out of its mottled hide, and a sense of unease not in the least bit relieved by the bizarre voice-overs.
Is it as good as the last two superb LPs, Snivilisation and Insides? Not yet. But I’ve only played it a couple of times, enough to know that it’s splendid in its own right, but far too little to have heard all of it. Anyway, it’s good enough to call itself an Orbital record, and that ought to be enough.