- Music
- 21 Sep 02
More than Leftfield, more than Underworld, it was Orbital that managed to translate dance music into a form acceptable to studious (ale drinking) big brothers all over the land
More than Leftfield, more than Underworld, it was Orbital – with their visually arresting gigs, their snazzy videos, and (most importantly) their undying faith in the good old LP – that managed to translate dance music into a form acceptable to studious (ale drinking) big brothers all over the land.
A good thing or a bad thing? Well, we’ll leave the sub-genre guerrillas to fight it out amongst themselves. But it’s worth wondering what shapes the Chemical Brothers would now be throwing if the Hartnolls hadn’t provided them with such a gold-plated template to work from. Intelligent, surprising albums you could listen to in the house, live shows big enough to steal Glastonbury’s heart. Sounds straight-forward now, but Orbital got there first.
Which is an achievement definitely worth celebrating.
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But is Work… the best way of going about it?
Well, no, because at its heart this 14 track collection – by deciding to follow the singles path of a group that held little or no stock in the single format – is conceptually challenged and deeply frustrating. So, while mighty and moving tracks like ‘Style’, ‘Nothing Left’, and ‘Are We Here’ are given an airing, ‘Illuminate’, ‘Satan Spawn’ and other late-period exercises in water-treading take up space that could be filled more profitably by such luminous moments as ‘Keine Trink Wasser’, ‘Petrol’ or ‘Waving Not Drowning’.