30 something years on and Orbital have a new best-of compilation celebrating their ’30 Something’ anniversary – the real anniversary was in lockdown. New track Smiley sums up the feeling of acid house, 303’s,distant raves and the times – especially with the evil Maggie robot and the sheep police and nods to Burning Man and Castlemorton and beyond.
Sadly feels like we are going back there?
Like the excellent Hardcore Energy Volume One compilation there seems to be a trend for sampling those old news reports and illegal rave videos. In fact I’ve heard that the old promoters now get more money licensing that illegal rave footage than anything else.
As well as special 30th-ish remixes from Orbital themselves – with the pointed and dead on Impact (30 Years Later and the Earth Is Still Burning Mix) – there are mixes from Lone (Galaxy Garden is STILL on my iPod over a decade later!), Jon Hopkins, David Holmes and many more names I don’t know. There’s also a few new or unreleased tracks like the 2012 track they did with Stephen Hawking for the Olympics.
A lot of it I think is really ‘for rabid fans only’ or people totally new to the band without expectation, there’s a lot of retreading here, and similar remixes. Not many radical retakes or wandering that far from the original source material here….
But I like the ‘Black Aquarius‘ remake of Satan (I recognise that Coven – Satanic Mass sample, pretty sure it’s that, it’s a totally ridiculous record), Impact and Halycyon 30th versions. The Lone remix of The Girl With The Sun In Her Head is one of the better remixes too., and Jon Hopkins as usual hits it out of the sun-drenched park (filled with birds seemingly) with his version of Halcyon. and nice to see Snivilisation get love with several updated versions of Are We Here.
That record was really my proper introduction to Orbital. I knew Chime and had Belfast on 7″ and Halcyon on tape,, but they were very much a singles band til that record, and unusually a record with one concept and message about climate change and political resistance to the Criminal Justice Bill.
And given the history of Orbital’s Belfast, getting David Holmes – who inspired the name via his club in Belfast where he invited Orbital to play early on – to remix it is a genius touch. Of all the (far too) many remixes of Belfast on this compilation, this is the don. You get a real feeling of history looping back and connection, which is a bit missing on some of the other mixes.
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