Mutations EP

I wrote one of these tracks! Okay, I didn't actually write it but I did come up with the name, Steel Cube Idolatry during an Orbital gig review last year, a facetious attempt to imply that, as with punk, this techno lark's almost too easy- peasy. Since that night at the Subterania, the Hartnoll brothers have adopted my title and I've come to appreciate the complexity and melodic ingenuity of their music. Aah, happy endings.

Halcyon

Eleven minutes of pure class, and more proof that Orbital prefer mini-symphonies to hands-in-the-air dance tracks. Halcyon is such a delicately tuned celestial piece that any kind of drug you care to name would destroy, rather than enhance, the mood. For something with extra club feel, check out the B-side, The Naked and the Dead, obviously inspired by Norman Mailer's book of the same title. You won't sleep for weeks.

[ Also: Pete Ashdown review ]

Lush 3

After Halcyon, this is the best track on the Hartnoll Bros. splendid LP: a shimmering dance of light, lucid and luscious, with a melodic synth refrain that's like imbibing an elixir of pure, distilled poignancy. But, in accordance with what is now virtually "The Law", Lush 3 has been subordinated to the mixing process, and so radically unravelled and restitched that the three new versions are practically new works altogether.

All well and good- postmodernism in full effect, "the death of the author" and all that- except none of them are nearly as good as the original. Underworld's is pumpin' and percussive, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia's is austere, aciiedic, interminable, and CJ Bollands is at once the most unfaithful (he gets his own publishing credit) and the only one to enhance the lush-ciousness of the original.

[ Also: Select Magazine review ]

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