Orbital #5. The Brown Album: "Impact (The Earth is Burning)," "Remind," "Walk Now...," "Monday," "Halcyon + On + On," and "Input Out."

CONCEPT

In actuality, there is no full interruption in sound throughout almost the first two thirds of the album, although an almost-pause between Planet of the Shapes and Lush 3.1 might serve. For the most part, however, if you don't watch the track sequence, each song seems to move onto the next in stages; serrated cuts and additions morph the sounds over several minutes. These song groupings are demarcated on the liner notes with extra line breaks.

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There are no lyrics throughout this whole section, with the exception of a brief burst of passionate words:

"It's it's it's it's... like a... like a... like a cry for survival. A cry for survival. Survival's the (end of the earth?) It's it's it's a cry. It's a cry for survival. Cry for survival. For their survival and for our survival."

Lush 3.2 shifts into Impact (The Earth is Burning. Despite the song's title and the lyrics cited above, it has a more optimistic sound the most of the rest of the album. The lighter tone is disrupted by an intrusive bassline, disonental "horn" synths, and oscillating acid, but then is alternately build back up with an organ effect. This sort of effect, a dense layering of a number of sounds, not all working together but often in tension with each other, built in, added and subtracted, is I think what people speak of when talking about Orbital's "signature" sound.

The words are said. The acid grinds down, just afterward. So is it a song about global warming?

It's the longest song on the album. After ten minutes, it takes another two to chime down into the much more sinister and insidious Remind.

Remind is almost identical to Impact in BPM, but the instrumentation is more stripped down with the occasional flourish of panicked synth and a more-or-less continuous seep of acid. The effect is claustrophobic; this is a paranoid song. It fades out completely at the end.

* * * * *

Towards the end of the album, each song is separated by a moment of silence, which also plays into its (open-ended? directed?) exploration of sequence and chronology.

Walk now... is just as insidious and morbid as Remind and seems to replace the latters constrained paranoia with a building and then bursting (at exactly 2:16) frenetic panic.

Monday isn't a cheerful song but, after Remind and Walk Now..., it acts as a sort of kinetic release. It doesn't brood. During the more urgent synth-informed moments (around 2:10), the sound becomes positively striving. It's the sort of song that makes you want to write a manifesto that will save the world.

Pianos similar to those on Monday will make a striking appearance in the next album, Snivilisation.

* * * * *

But now, the moment you've been waiting for... assuming anyone's actually reading this.

By the Wikipedia article, Halcyon was written in reference to "Halcion" or "Triazolam," a sedative drug used by Insomniacs and the Hartnoll brother's mother. Rarely prescribed these days, the dosage of the drug is a critical concern and it has been known to cause hallucination and amnesia with frequency.

I've not actually heard this song... the version everybody's familiar with through The Brown Album is the dance remix Halcyon-and-on-and-on. Which is the point of the album that showcases the reversed Hawkshall samples, and still manages to be profoundly sad and serene.

There's little to say about the song: it's absolutely incredible. While the albums I compared the Brown Album to in the last post all are compiled of mighty giants and trees of song, the whole Brown album seems to build toward, or better, revolve around this point. The song has a persistant and addictive beat, worthy of Chime, but the gloom and tranquility of the music itself is also consummate.

The song would be a good argument for anyone arguing that the repetitiveness, commercialization, or new-fangledness of Orbital rules it out as a candidate for "high art."

But we've already dismissed such segregations, right?

One last note: the title of the song: "on and on and on" throws back explicity to the them of circularity, sampling, and repetition. I won't insult you with an explanation.

When the vocals finally shuffle and fade away, Input out (notice the last dig / final inversion) mirrors the first track in effect if not lyrics ("Outward Rotation / Info Translation"), and we're right back where we started.

It's an album worthy of Flann O'Brien.

END OF POST.