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Orbital set to release the Blue Album

Author: TranZfusion
Friday, July 9, 2004
Orbital's Blue Album campaign will be an emotional one for Magnum in many ways. In 1990 Chime entered the UK's Top 20 and the Green album changed the face of electronic music in the world and certainly got us hooked into electronic music culture. They developed a live show that evolved, by common consent into one of the landmark performance shows of the last decade.

Orbital have helped shape and develop both the character and credibility of electronic music far beyond the disposable anonymity of the first white labels and the acid house scene that they came from.

15 years later, the Orbital Brothers, Phil and Paul Hartnoll release their last album and will play their last gigs together. Ironically, their last album "Is closer in character to our first album than our later ones, if only because we made it in our own time and for ourselves," says Paul. Which makes sense as the brothers extra-mural interests have all informed the character of the Blue Album, the band's seventh which evolved gradually over the course of 2003 with the band free from record company expectations and schedules for the first time since their career began.

Supplying us with "Bath Time," an audible influence of the legendary Walter/Wendy Carlos, gives the Blue Album that Clockwork Orange extra special feel -- making electronic music for electronic music's sake dodging all real instrument sounds. It's exactly the way Orbital should go, isn't it- Well, we rather they didn't go at all, but two brothers recording in the same room for 15 years now -- they're ready for a change.

And speaking of siblings... fellow sibling legends The Sparks add something fairly odd to the Blue Album, "Acid Pants" how appropriately titled as the Hartnoll brothers finds the Sparks recent work even more bonkers than their original stuff. And then there's "Easy Serve" 'Weird supermarket muzak almost like hospital muzak. Maybe its supermarket muzak where they only sell hospital items. Either way, it's not going to be a coffee table album. But then we've never done one of them. Maybe a coffee table album at three in the morning when everyone is blind drunk and no one can remember anything anyway." And of course, what's an Orbital recording without an ending with "One Perfect Sunrise" recorded with Lisa Gerrard who we all love and know from Dead Can Dance...

Yes, its' Sad But true, Orbital bid us farwell, but what a tasty delight they have offered as their good bye. We at Magnum have many fond memories of working with Phil and Paul from their groundbreaking albums to their brilliant live shows. Orbital will always be one of our absolute favorites, and we will truly miss them. So let's give them a farewell that they deserve and hope that these brothers come back to America for one final performance!
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