Orbital #6. Snivilisation

CONCEPT

Here is it... Snivilisation represents the beginning and end of my Orbital albums, so I won't be writing about them for quite some time.

Snivilistion was the first Orbital album I ever bought, it having been recommended above all others in some book... for that reason, it bascially formed (along with Halcyon + On + On and Lush 3.1 and maybe that song off the Pi soundtrack) my first impression of them.

I'll mention the jacket arts, just because it's so weird and compelling. The jacket is primarily a muted white and black ink on a gray surface, and suggests French Surrealism like every other marginally antiestablishment album of the nineties. Here, however, there's an advantage of detail and thought. On the front, a piece of tubing forms the outline of a figure, with swollen hands on each end, the cord twisting before a loop to form the neck and head. Two globes form eyes (crowned with an "Orbital" halo) and a piece of rummer tumbing tears through the background to form a trunklike nose. These can just as easily be seen as testicles and penis. The mouth is a barcode. The right hand holds a tissue that wipes the nose. The left hand fingers a pause button on a console of CD player controls. The "figure" is wearing headphones, and listening to a walkman cassette player. Musical notes dance across the background, at the latitude of the ears. The figure is crowned with the flags of ten developed nations: I believe them to be France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, China, Switzerland, Italy, and Mexico (though it's difficult to tell in the grayscale). A dotted line runs the perimeter of all this and cars drive on either, unmarked lane.

On the inside are two basic pictures. At center, a giant egg with webbed feet and human arms emerging from holes reclines in a chair with a newspaper over its "face" a fifth hole facing a TV (which depicts a fruit-filled tree and a smiling sun). On the wall behind the TV hangs a painting of a fruit-filled tree and a smiling sun. Out the window is a fruit-filled tree and a shining sun. Beside the chair is a coffee mug depicting a fruity tree and a shining sun. On either side, this scene is guaded by two phallic loking naked female figures (phallic on account of their rounded theighs and elongated torsoes). They stand on webbed feet, and hold spears and shields with a lightning motif in their human hands. For heads they also have an egg with a small hole to setve as an "eye."

The final image is a large bearded man seated on a throne set upon a cloud (presumably God). He wears a black helmet device that covers his eyes entirely, and it is fitted with a plate that reads 'VIRTUALITY'. So much for that.

* * * * *

I bought Snivilisation in my annual music buying binge. It was January (early February) 2004 and I'd been saving my nickels and dimes for Jessica's engagement ring all year. Compared to the first two Orbital albums this one has a sad breathyness to it, an almost echoing effect as if the different layers of music were recorded at different distances.

It's also, of the first three, by far the most unified. Snivilisation lacks the innocent highs and searing lows of the Green album. It builds and progresses throughout instead of suddenly jumping without rhyme or reason. Moreover, while I might argue that the best songs are on the Green album, Snivilisation is the more orgnanic album. For all this, it has also been called their most eclectic work. As someone reviewed on Amazon stated, "I believe the Hartnolls set out very deliberately to catalogue the insecurities of the modern era, and then propose a transcendent musical solution." I agree. The music is explicitly philosophical and political; the sound bites are no longer limited to oblique science errata, and the sound texture through out maintains a low, sober concern... I don't know exactly how to express it. The layering reminds me of the "beehive" background that I've heard attributed to many Techno albums, except the effect here is soothing instead of infuriating. It seems to suggest, "do not worry. You were much too small to save the world."

* * * * *

Snivilisation goes easier on the sound-bites than its forebears and the first song Forever begins with a synth-driven melody over a chorus of voices proclaiming on human suffering and human damnation. The song moves forward at mid-tempo, but it's got meloncholy overtones... almost a more beat-driven, less operatic take on Belfast. "While millions of others suffer, go hungry, condemmed forever."

"Ladies and gentlemen, everyone please, gather around for the show, we're going to have a freak show." Throughout I wish I had Duck Feet a showman announces various sideshow acts (the Illuminated Man, the Sword Swollower, etc.) over an addictive drumming effect and the same sad (though now more self-assured) overtones of Forever.

Sad but True is the first uptempo (by which I mean upper mid) installation. It also sounds a little less bleak with the mounting chopped up vocals and climbing lyrics of Alison Goldfrapp. Half of Orbitals' genius was in their ability to sample the best female vocalists. "Somehow feel alive."

Crash and Carry is wonderful and complex and sounds just like what its title implies. It's generally uptempo. As I described the album as sounding organic, by this far in it's moved from a quiet meditative pace to something angrier and more forceful.

Because the voice samples on Snivilisation are more extensive and deliberate than on earlier albums, they create the suggestion of a conversation, but more, the songs (like Crash and Carry) without vocals seem more machine-driven than they would have in earlier albums (where voices were just part of the progression). Also, songs are distinct, beginning and ending separately from each other. This might seem to work against the assertion of an organic wsound, but the build of the mood throughout is so consistant that the shifts are almost unnoticed.

Science Friction is fast and gorgeous, blending the furious pace of Crash and Carry with a trickling piano sequence. Eventually it breaks down into solid sound.

Philosophy by Numbers is dominated by a woman offering degrees, a woman offering cosmetic surgical options, and a man discussing physical ramifications... to what, he does not specify. It's easily my least favorite track, but I can appreciate its role in the build of the album.

Kein Trink Wasser or "Not for drinking!" Again, Daniel Stanton on Amazon writes:

It begins with what sounds like an attention-starved child banging on the same piano key over and over again, then almost imperceptibly other piano melodies are introduced and begin to interplay and weave around the simplistic core. What was initially annoying is suddenly startlingly poignant.

In the closing minutes of the song all of its diverse accumulated elements rush in and build, then gradually fade out, one-by-one.

And Quality Seconds is angry and punky. It clocks in at under two minutes.

This is a more abbreviated commentary than I've allowed the other albums; it's a sign of nothing but my exhaustion. I listened to this album (especially Science Friction and Kein Trink Wasser) each morning in 2004 when I was riding the Orange Line each morning to work at Neurosurgery, where I was frequently exhausted... it was an exhausting year, but those mornings gave me something crystalline to look forward to.

Are We Here? is Snivilisation's seminal track, it's Halcyon. It begins with an irrit
"Are, are we here?"
"Are we unique, are we something utterly special in the universe or are we, are we, example of many different civilizations, many different life forms?"
And "What does God say?"

While the drum rhythm of this fifteen minutes song is addictive from the outset, I do admit to finding the samples a little grating at the beginning, mainly on account of the "professor's" graphite-edged voice. But the song has an animation and a build that takes hold right from the beginning.

"Why do you want a nuclear attack?"

Several minutes in, most of the accumulated sounds drop out, and abrasive electronic notes drop in at alternate planes simultaneous. This angry sequence continues for several minutes, and gradually recedes to the drumming sequence. Now the original samples return with more optimistic chimes and Alison Goldfrapp:

"Being at a higher level."

This meanders, builds, recedes, and builds, and finally, when the music seems like it will fade out without effect, I am treated to the most engaging voice samples on the album:

"What does God say?"
"The prodigal son is alive and well and living in the front bedroom."
"We never see him. He treats this home like a hotel."
"He's got his picture."
"...disgust long-haired work-shy dirty lay-about who ought to be in the bloody army!"
"What does God say?"
"What does God say?"
"What does God say?"

There is it: Are We Here, the album within the album.

Attached could possibly loop around (Brown Album style) like the snake to eat its own tail. The last and first songs seem sequenced for each other, and the phrase "attached forever," could take on significance given the environmeental and political themes of the album.

It's an abient piece, a slow building organ epic of electronic buzzes. It builds slowly for several minutes, and fades for several more.

And that's all I have to say about Orbital today.

END OF POST.