Octane OST

Orbital have always been regarded as sage overlords of the art of encapsulating pre-millennial tension and modern angst. The cordial brothers Hartnoll have always ingeniously fused a sense of distinctly British urban malaise with unusual character and sentiment, walking a fine line between style and substance but never falling over the edge. For years, Orbital were possibly the best thing you could come across in a field in Hampshire, and their festival appearances par excellence have made fervid fans of trendy-mulleted Hoxton kids and tree-hugging Somerset hippies alike.

Octane, then, is a rather unwelcome departure for the pair. They have earned their stripes as highly disciplined electro-genuises, and so a film soundtrack seemed a natural progression, a chance for the boys to bring their brand of sparkling electronica to the silver screen. By contrast, the music on the whole, is clinical and somehow desperately soulless. Someone obviously forgot to tell them that one lone keyboard note does not a film score make. Rather than the lush, effusive, charming score one was expecting, the album is stone-cold, the unmoving and inhuman sounds of life on a distant, sub-zero planet. Perhaps as an accompaniment to a film, the music comes across as vaguely brooding, atmospheric, or effective, but as a stand-alone album, the succession of ascetic vignettes is cyborg-like, faceless, devoid of rhyme or reason, and surprisingly anaemic.

‘Chasing The Tanker’ is perhaps the only song that might work as an actual song, though to be fair, even it is a confused orgy of fallow, confused sampling.

Given the Hartnoll brother’s capacity for emotion and narrative within the often-restrictive confines of electro music, this is a somewhat insufficient and underwhelming collection. Whether or not they’ll be guileless enough to insert any of this into their otherwise-pristine live set remains to be seen….