Orbital ‘The Altogether’
March 25th, 2002 by freddie96
ORBITAL
The Altogether
(London)
Good old Orbital are back with their sixth album. Six albums – that’s more than a lot of acts ever get round to – and not a dud among them. They may not be deemed groundbreaking any more (received opinion tends to prefer their first three albums), but the way they continue to plough their own furrow with scant concern for musical fashion is clearly a strength. This album amply demonstrates that.
Indeed, ‘The Altogether’ is very much Orbital doing their own thing, doing it well, and, from the sound of it, enjoying themselves greatly to boot. It features their trademark brew of melodic chord sequences, bashing beats and leftfield weird shit, but with an added intensity and playfulness that feels new. Certainly no-one could accuse the Hartnoll brothers of going soft in their old age – there are some distinctly rough edges to this album which show that they have lost none of the fire that fuelled so much of their early work.
In this respect, ‘Tension’, the opener, is something of a gauntlet thrown down to the listener. It does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s an uncomfortable, punky track which might well make you twitch. It sets the tone, though, because it makes you sit and up listen – is that really a Cramps sample I hear? – and wonder what will come next.
And there’s no easy description for what does come next, either: ‘Funny Break’, the single (a somewhat safe choice), ‘Oi’, a homage of sorts to Ian Dury (straight outta London), ‘Pay Per View’, ‘Last Thing’ and ‘Shadows’ (three classic Orbital tracks that cry out for long live renditions), ‘Tootled’ (Crass-sampling electropunk), a dotty cyberpunk reel called ‘Waving Not Drowning’ that moves down a gear into ‘Illuminate’, a pure pop track with David Gray on vocals (it would make a supremely radio-friendly single), and finally the dark anger of ‘Meltdown’, perhaps the album’s finest moment (especially that intro knicked from the Dead Kennedys’ ‘Holiday in Cambodia’)… there’s a hell of a lot packed into all eleven tracks here. Perhaps that’s why it’s called ‘The Altogether’. Welcome to our barmy world, it seems to say. Make sense of it if you can.
Whether or not it works wholly as an album is not really the point. It’s an intriguing, madly energetic work from an outfit who clearly refuse to be straightjacketed; they’ve even included ‘Doctor ?’, their rendition of the Doctor Who theme, an old live favourite that is bound to please fans but irritate just as many others. (No doubt having David Gray onboard will prove similarly divisive.) To some extent the uncompromising, restless nature of ‘The Altogether’ suggests it will indeed find its true home amongst Orbital’s considerable fanbase rather than in the nation’s hearts.
Personally, since I am one of those fans, I have to confess I am finding this an oddly inspiring record. For my money, it’s a proper pop album: varied, even erratic, certainly not over-crafted or conceptualised, but teeming with life. The kind of joyful racket, come to think of it, that the likes of the Cramps, Crass and the Dead Kennedys used to knock out – and that somehow demands to be played to death (I couldn’t help myself playing it three times in a row on first hearing and am returning to it with obsessive regularity).
Orbital are definitely back on form. And who knows? The youthful vitality of ‘The Altogether’ might bring them a whole new audience. FB
