Orbital #1. The Green Album: "Chime," "Satan," and "Belfast"

CONCEPT

Is Connor sufficiently equipped to review Orbital? No, not remotely, or even close, or even approximate... the last week has disabused me any notions as to that.

But is he able to talk about Orbital? I say, yes, if I can stick within the boundaries of familiar vocabulary and open inquiry, with the important conditional that certain others must accept my invitation to step in an share their more musically informed wisdom (I'm thinking of C. Cody, alan1, Skyballs, and Sam in particular, but I'd like others to augment me here).

In short, I'm going to try to talk meaninfully about the impulse under the song and what it communicates to the listerner; things I ought to be able to engage with even a limited context. I'm hoping you'll help flesh out the discussion with needed detail.

Everybody else, get a cup of coffee and focus your eyes. Who knows where we're going next...

* * * * *

Phil Hartnoll was born on January 9th, 1964, and his brother Paul, was born May 19th, 1968. That would make them 42 and 37 today, respectively. More importantly, it would make them 20 and 25 when they formed Orbital in 1989. At the time Electronic Music hadn't gone mainstream in a big way. While (as I've learned in the last week) is an oversimplified and occasionally untrue statement, as New Wave and Synthpop and other self-recognized groups used electronic technology extensively in their music. But as near as I can tell, it's still reasonable to make a distinction between the structure of the song.

To put it a little differently, House and Trance and Techno, as it's evolved in the last two decades seems to have a structure that takes optimal advantage of the possiblities of loops and mixing and the other technology available, as well as being evolved in the incubators of raves. Sometimes this is conspicuous: eight to eighty minutes songs, and a gradual build over a long period of time... things that might be expressed in other genres of music but which, for whatever reason, have not been.

New Wave and Synth Pop, for all of their pioneering aspects still seemed to apply electronic sound to a pop/rock structure (ultimately derived from the Blues, and more ultimately derived from hollar and call-and-respond spirituals). And this is why Orbital may have been instrumental to the popularization of electronic music. They made the structure of House music accessible. "Chime," "Belfast," and "Satan" are all catchy songs. They would be addictive dance anthems when experienced live, but in an album, they're distilled down to 8:05, 8:01, and 5:30. There are Smashing Pumpkins songs longer than that.

So much for history.

Moving on.

* * * * *

As for the first Orbital album, it was released in 1991 in the UK, and in 1992 in the US. Officially, the album was self-titled but soon became known as "the Green Album" to avoid confusion with the almost identical seeming second album, Orbital 2 (aka "the Brown Album"). The "album" is actually a compilation of singles, and the British version is different from the American both in content (I'm lacking "Steel Cube Idolatry," "High Rise," and the outro "I think it's Disgusting") and order. Moreover, on the British version, "Chime" and "Midnight" are live; they are not on the US version.

I say all of this to explain my lack of concern with order; I'm starting out with three best known tracks.

Chime

We're still in straightforward and ephemeral territory here, in terms of knowing what the song is and what it wants. Firstoff, it's a dance song:

ting ting tinting ting ting tintintinting
ting ting tinting ting ting tinting tintinting

and repeat. (Can you read that aloud four times fast without tripping up? If not, then you'll understand that dance music can take on subtlety even on the smallest levels).

The synthetic tingling sounds as if sampled from a hammered dulcimer, and is an insistant, pesky little thing. Approached generally, there's nothing by way of sound or commentary to suggest E or rave hystrionics, but you are ready to dance by the time the beat emerges.

The song as a whole has a minimalist feel, which is conspicuous even against the later work by Orbital (I've always been struck by their preference for introducing three or four elements of sound and twisting them to full potential instead of layering in more). By several minutes in, the song has picked up about five elements; three synth effects, a bass effect, and percussion. The evolution of the music is relatively straightforward and doesn't crescendo with the high tension that Orbital pulled in the Brown Album and Snivilisation.

Still, it manages to peak interest when it drops elements near the end, and after all the motion and bobbing up and down, the overall effect is still animated warmth. Low fuzzy sounds and high precise ones that are insistant through their repetitions. It's addictive, which is what it needed to be to be what it was. And there's a sentence like the song itself.

Satan

Some people might argue that every song on this album... they might say that every song on Orbital's first three albums is so... I appreciate Satan as a dance song, I respect in it the same austerity that works for Chime, and I like the imposition of a sense of claustrophobia simply through the repetition of sythensized staccato chromatic scales. The spinning and rap overlays; they don't overstay there welcome, which is also remarkable to me.

I still prefer Chime. It's airiness and spontaneity (remember, in an eight minute song) strikes me as more difficult and more novel than self-conscious hip-shaking paranoia. Not that either is "easy."

Belfast

Of the Brown Album's "big three" this may be my favorite. It also, I believe, predicts the direction Orbital will move with their next to albums in a way that eludes both Satan and Chimes. It has the strange, theremin-suggesting whine, the spacey squeaks and blips, the sighing vocals and melodramatic piano that are more prominent in later songs like Halcyon.

In terms of personality, it's just as soft and tender, as fleshy and plump and midtempo as Chime, but not as persistant and demanding someone dance. It strikes me as a sad song, which is most subtly reinforced by the down cast of all the instrumentation, but particularly in the vocals: the girl could be singing at a funeral.