Orbital - Brown Album (Reissue review)

 

I am fairly sure you cannot improve on perfection. In Orbital’s case, reissuing their spellbinding ‘Brown’ album (London Records) was always going to be warmly greeted, but what else did the brothers Hartnoll have in their locker? In stark contrast to Kraftwerk’s recent unmolested 50th anniversary reissue of ‘Autobahn’, the duo managed to curate a thirty-twotrack 4 CD boxed techno odyssey.

A completist’s dream in fact, the original masterpiece augmented by a swathe of remixes, live versions, and other seminal singles, released during their early years, together with a telephone directory’s worth of sleeve notes.

The main question on my mind, however, relates to the running order of the original album, in particular, the reissued cassette version. The original tape playfully renamed the de facto opener ‘Planet of the Tapes’ and kicked it over the start of side two. This was a stroke of pure Hartnoll genius, giving the outward quartet of tracks free rein to create untrammelled havoc after an all too brief looped vocal into ‘Time Becomes.’  The opening seconds of Lush 3.1 felt like a gentle lift-off, the sonic equivalent of Friday night getting underway, the ground slowly falling away as you headed for the stratosphere with a little help from the harder edged rocket boosters in Lush 3.2, the daily grind already a distant memory. Ramping things up another notch or three, the frenetic energy and unforgettable melody of ‘Impact (The Earth Is Burning)’, cloaked in ecclesiastical fairy dust, yet still maintaining full-on glorious technicolour. Gasping for breath, ‘Impact’s’ woozy detumescent denouement gave way to the Meat Beat Manifesto influenced “Remind,” a driving hypnotic conclusion to a hedonistic techno blitzkrieg, leaving the listener breathless yet simultaneously wanting it to last forever. 

 

Not including closer ‘Input Out’, the remaining four Brown tracks are distinct, standing on their own two feet with ease, starting with the gloriously claustrophobic paranoia of ‘Planet of the Shapes/Tapes.’ Replete with chilling Paul McGann sample from Withnail and I, designed to haunt the listener all the way to and indeed beyond the grave ‘Planet…’ would effortlessly fit into the soundtrack of ‘Das Boot’. ‘Walk On’ was forged by a lengthy visit to Australia, the didgeridoo samples the obvious pointer backed up by the looped clicker, a recording of antipodean pedestrian crossings. Stuttering percussion greets us on penultimate track ‘Monday’, the suburban feel seems redolent of the soothing rhythm of a commuter train, the disgruntled employee returning to the rat race, the weekend over in the blink of an eye.

 

Inspired jointly by prescription tranquilizers taken by the brother’s mother when they were kids together with an irritating period advert for white goods, closer ‘Halcyon + On + On’ was an extended version of their single of almost the same name. Kirsty Hawkshaw was once more drafted in, reprising her appearance on the former, adding extra vocals to the latter, including with a little friendly mangling, hat became the track’s heavenly intro, perhaps the Brown album’s defining moment. 

 

Still peerless.

 

Words by Michael Price

Orbital official