In Sides
Select, June 1996"I do not like it. There are too many notes." Thus did the King of Prussia reputedly dismiss one of Mozart's great requiem masses, to the fury of the master composer and freewheeling Shaun Ryder of his day. His Majesty was obviously something of an embryonic Northern Uproar fan, for his is an attitude that persists to this day: that simplicity and honesty are always identical, and that any attempts to map out more complex musical or emotional terrain must therefore be the work of unhealthily perfumed pompadour. Or- more latterly- shandy-drinking student twats.
Well, it's home time for you, Proper Music fans, because this fourth album by Orbital has too much everything: too many notes, too many diversions, a surfeit of colour, invention, spirit, moods, character and humour in every department... and then a little more too. Since 'Chime' in 1989, it's always been clear that Phil and Paul Hartnoll were interested in more than simply establishing a bridgehead between rush-mongering rave and techno's spiralling intricacies. Of their contemporaries, Liam Howlett and Leftfield want to win sales and respect for the underground, Aphex and Underworld want to take techno on a dadaist art trip. But, from the lush, ambitious arrangements of Orbital's "brown" album in 1992, and the systems-music experiments on 1994's 'Snivilisation', you could tell the Hartnolls were playing for bigger numbers. They want to make music that's as accepted on Radio 3 as it is to Pete Tong- 21st century classical music you can dance to. With 'In Sides', they've succeeded.
It's a long record, but it has to be. Its 70 minutes are comprised of only six recordings, yet each changes its clothes at least twice before the end. One of them- 'Out There Somewhere'- is only two minutes shorter than The Lemonheads' 'It's A Shame About Ray', and has more ideas than Evan Dando's whole life. This is music so vast that their record company had to invent a new vinyl format to contain it- neither a triple album nor a trio of 12-inchers, but something in between. Each piece gets a side to itself, hence the name.
Yet, for all the scale and ambition of 'In Sides', its overriding mood is not prog-rock pomp, but quiet industry and ingenuity. Apparently, none of these tracks was conceived as a nine or ten minute monster. The Hartnolls just took ideas, and followed them wherever they went. Insofar as the music is about anything, 'In Sides' describes these everyday departure points- perhaps in more detail, and more strangely, than Orbital had intended. The opener, 'The Girl With The Sun In Her Head', was recorded using power from Greenpeace's mobile solar generator, and it commences with an indistinct firing-up cough that could be a conventional generator itself. The tones and patterns that slide in have the winsome flavour of 'Halcyon', but there's something ominous hidden in its mood of elation- as if the sun in here head might not be the one in the sky. This is a very Orbital motif: they spot the malaise behind modern ideas of happiness, but also draw beauty from the saddest subjects ('Halcyon' was based on the Hartnoll's mum's addiction to the tranquilliser of the same name). And, already, weird things are happening to the bones of the music. What sounds like a typical bleep-cycle erupts into a full Bryan May-style solo, complete with sampler-spanking fret action. It's unlike anything you've heard on a record- electronica's first bleep axe-out.
The second track, 'P.E.T.R.O.L.', has even more mundane origins: the Hartnolls wrote it for the soundtrack for the video game, Wipeout. It's a pulsing web of tension, mazed over with predatory percussion. But Orbital lift it from a simple commission job by working at its krautrock roots, with all their contradictions of alienation and the love of technology. 'P.E.T.R.O.L.' is about speed and collision and pursuit, but it's also about the Hartnoll's relationship with the machines they use every day.
Next, the four-part single/EP/overture 'The Box' makes an appearance, in yet a fifth version. Of everything here, it's the most puzzling, with clock chimes giving way to spy-theme atmospherics and what sound suspiciously like balalaikas. It's nobody's idea of a single, because it's less of a song than a conundrum: the musical box becomes a Rubik's Cube, which becomes a Pandora's Box of sinister themes. Equally foreboding is 'Dwr Budr', where female vocals and ancient Moog-like synths twine around the track's taut "Planet Rock" beats. The title is Welsh for "dirty water", echoing 'Snivilisation''s 'Keine Trink Wasser', but flipping its lament for poisoned streams into something more ambiguous. And 'Adnans'- originally written for the War Child 'Help' LP and here excluded in expanded form- also sidesteps glibness. It plays off a metallic drum tattoo against an electro bassline and 303 noises, which defy convention by being slow and stately. Though it would be an overstatement to describe it as music about the Bosnian War, its mood and pacing owe less to techno than to processional hymns.
'Out There Somewhere' closes 'In Sides', and it steals more than just its title from The X Files. Just as Mulder believes that, if he can assemble the parts of the mystery, he can make sense of it, so Orbital visit and revisit themes within this tour de force of a track, and try to make sense of their own music. There are passages where Kraftwerk beats run into acid house, and where dub pyrotechnics illuminate the sounds of PiL, Wurlitzer organs and even Orbital's old records. It's like they found the theme that wouldn't let them go, so they fought it for 24 minutes, and then faded it into nothing.
'In Sides' is, to all intents, Orbital's farewell to techno. The word already seems too small to encompass what this band is about, and it's hard to envisage them going back to the 4/4 dynamics of 'Lush'. maybe it's harder still to see them revisiting the likes of their two Glastonbury shows, wearing those gnome hats or, well, remixing Northern Uproar. On the evidence of 'In Sides', though, it's easy to see them going on to make music every bit as moving and lastingly satisfying as the dance records that got them started, and as emblematic of their time as the punk records they listened to before that.
- Contact Select Magazine at selectmag@delphi.com.
- This album was awarded a score of 5 out of 5.
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