Well, seems some midnight owls beat me to the first Orbital mention, but
not the first Orbital review.
First, back to Tuesday night, and Teep's trainspot night. Nice 313 bangy
stuff, and finished off the night with some wickit new-school electro.
Paul Hartnoll showed up, and we chatted for a while, about the new Star
Trek movie, Bullitt and Steve Mcqueen (Paul says greatest bass line ever)
and other things. John Coxon of Spring Heel Jack showed up too. Talked
with him about Spiritualized, who he plays guitar for. According to
Allert's idm concert list, I used to be a music journalist, but now that
I don't do radio anymore I'm a rabid loony fan. I guess what I'm trying
to say is I've interviewed P&P twice before, and was just hanging with
them this time. Fred Gianelli was there too. He's in town for a big rave
next weekend. Playing live.
So, onto to the Wednesday night concert. Arrived about half an hour
before SHJ. Glad somebody id'd the song they started with. I knew it
had to be from the 50-60's loop school. SHJ take the stage, and pound
out some great intelligent jungle. I believe they said they had their
drum lines on ADAT, and from there they just laid on samples, including
everything from strings to crying babies, to distorted guitars and all
kinds of wacky stuff. Highly enjoyable.
Orbital take to the stage closing in on 11pm. Like the time I saw them
this summer, they led off with Out There, Somewhere? Did almost the
whole thing too. On to Lush, I think where they had a small technical
error. It was like the synth keys just got stuck down. Weird. Rest of the
tracks, not in any order, Forever, Satan, Belfast, Halcyon, LC2, The Box,
Girl with the Sun in Her Head, and PETROL. The encore was Chime/Impact.
Whoever said months ago that the live PETROL should be packaged up and
sold was damn right. But the killer of the night was Satan. I don't
think it's one of Orbital's greatest tracks, but the visuals were
incredible. That nasty dog was back, along with the gun, and the old b&w
film clips. Plus these incredibly bright blue neon strobes. Overwhelming,
and clearly the standout of the night.
Somebody asked about their equipment, and I know from having asked them
that what they are doing is a continuous stream of cuing digital samples,
even though you do see keyboards on stage. What I always enjoy when they
are live is that they don't follow the mantra of modern dance music,
being in groups of 4/16/32. It just sounds so fresh to hear things
coming in more randomly. You composers out there take note.
Crowd was slow to start dancing at the start, cause it was absolutely
packed. But things thinned out, and eventually all 1000 people there were
pumping and grinding.
Sound was good. According to the new concert directives, I was standing
by sound board. I wasn't spotting, it was just the only place I could
see, and last night I was 6'2" in my docs, so that may give you an idea
of how packed it was.
According to the list directives, I did drink beer, I did dance, but I
had a plain shirt, cause my Ninja Tune shirt was dirty. :(
The new live ep is on track to be released soon.
Coming to a town near you...soon. :)
Phil Downey
onnow: Theory of Evolution
Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm
wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f
y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r). --Steven Pinker