Orbital's Hartnoll brothers look back | Hacker News Reader

Orbital's Hartnoll brothers look back

theguardian.com

57 pointsobiefernandez49 comments

I taught myself programming to Orbital. I'd just moved into the basement, and finally had my own computer: a hand-me-down PC-AT, my father's, which I upgraded with a 486 motherboard with an entire megabyte of RAM.

I'd pop in a CD of Orbital 2: a twist, in the fabric of space, where time becomes a loop. Then zone out on Turbo Pascal. When I didn't understand how to do something, a very frequent occurrence, I would pick up one of three hefty tomes and try to figure it out. Funnily enough, the thinnest one, which promised to teach me Turbo Pascal in 21 days, was the most useful.

Several years later I discovered LSD, and let me tell you: whole different album!

I've never entirely stopped hacking to Orbital 2, once or twice a year it's just the thing. LSD I moved on from.

> a twist, in the fabric of space, where time becomes a loop

Are you referring to the theory of the mobius, Mr. Worf?

Yes and no. There's an Orbital song that samples that line by Worf from Star Trek TNG.

Thank you, I was aware. :)

That sample is the opener for the Orbital 2 album.

I always get that episode confused with the one where Data must choose Riker's plan #3 to avoid crashing into the other ship captained by Frasier Crane.

Orbital under LSD is likely a combination tried by many.

But how was "Teach yourself Pascal in 21 days" under LSD?

By that point I had moved on to C/C++, and Perl. Mostly Perl.

Perl is an acid casualty of a language, so that worked out ok.

It's true, Love's Secret Domain does not share much stylistically with the brown album

I met Paul in 1999 after a show they did in Austin with Crystal Method and Lo Fidelity All-Stars. I was a nerdy 20 year old who had no business hanging out with a bunch of EDM superstars, but someone had some kind of hookup and we got to hang out together.

From an email I sent my brother at the time:

"This show was so cool. It was a rave. We went to this music hall. I danced throughout the whole show. I met the singer from Lo Fidelity All Stars and got his autograph during the show, and we hung out with Ken from Crystal method and Paul from Orbital after the show. The guy from Orbital was impressed by the fact that we worked for a .com. I went with two other guys from Trilogy. Orbital was just amazing. It was just like their live album - Halcyon with the "Shot through the heart", the "SATAN SATAN SATAN" song, some stuff I didn't know. Crystal Method played keep hope alive and get busy child and some new stuff. I got so dehydrated though."

That's awesome. I caught that same tour when they came to Philly -- at age 16 it was the first major live music event I ever attended. Since then I've been to hundreds of shows and hundreds of raves, but that night in 1999 still ranks near the top of my list. The room absolutely exploded when Orbital played Halcyon live.

Also don't forget John Kelley, who DJ'ed between sets on (I believe) every night of the tour. He was known for his excellent "funky desert breaks" mix cd.

Listening to these guys while reading this brings back ALL the memories. 90's east coast rave scene was an eye opener.

I have come to realize in hindsight that much of who I am was shaped by Gibson, Thompson, rave culture and all the drugs I could get my hands on. Locked up all weekend with friends a pile of molly, mushrooms and the first kind bud I ever saw.

So much of early tech is interlaced into drug cluture and I dont think we talk about it out in the open as much as we should. That however might be a good thing.

http://hyperreal.org/

:-)

For me, Orbital, Underworld, and a few other acts from that scene were such a compelling background to the new tech aesthetic emerging in the 90s.

The Hackers movie epitomised albeit in a cheesy way much of that aesthetic.

And its soundtrack included the likes of Underworld, Leftfield, Orbital etc.

It all happened at this incredible cultural flashpoint where you knew there was something major happening, and were sort of riding the wave of it to see where it went. I don't know that anybody has ever put a name to it like "Punk" or "Flapper" or something similar, but there it was, a complete cultural aesthetic you could participate in. Clothing, music, media, ways of talking and interacting, occupations, good guys, bad guys, a mainstream, a counter culture, gathering places, and so on.

There was this incredible alignment of creative pursuit that all gave it voice, even if it doesn't really have a name. The Hackers Movie, Techno, Raves, Cyberpunk, Wired Magazine, 2600 Magazine, BBSs, Wipeout and the Playstation Aesthetic, and on and on. There was so much frenetic energy it felt like a movement. It was that bold transition in the stylings of technology where the stilted suits and ties gave in and gave way and the nerds and the democratization of computing created by early PCs and modems over POTs lines finally emboldened individuals to feel that they had a power and voice against big corporations and their giant mainframes and telephone providers. Suddenly billions in stuffy infrastructure turned into a playground if you could pass the barrier to entry and attain the right skills.

I think Cyberpunk sort of subsumed it because there's superficial similarities, but Cyberpunk was only the fiction that drove this movement, the Hacker lifestyle was real, you could actually live it.

The big 2600 conferences of the era were absolutely electric.

I thought the movie was cheesy cute-- a friend always said it was a movie about rollerblading in Manhattan with strong computer themes. It is telling that the soundtrack had two sequels and the movie had none.

God, Orbital has been a part of my life for 30 years now. So many times they've been the soundtrack to gaming, coding, chores, or just listening.

This triplet of albums will forever be my favourites: Snivilisation, In Sides, and The Middle Of Nowhere. Although the rest of their stuff is also great, those 3 are part of my personal soundtrack. The Girl With The Sun In Her Head, Kein Trink Wasser, so many great tracks.

Perhaps my favourite of the later stuff has been the Satan 30 something years later mix, because it's as the kids say, a banger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLeVJDJG2mk

Heck I adore their newer album, Optical Delusion, especially Dirty Rat, and Day One

Sorry, not much great insight to share, or point to be made, just a greybeard thankful for the experiences during their brief spark of life.

The Box is just one of those all time favorites. It's one of those epic tracks that puts my imagination into overdrive using it as the soundtrack to a short story.

On a trip to Sydney, I had to record the sound of the crosswalk for myself as I finally got to experience the source of the sample in Walk Now.

> Satan

The use of Bon Jovi and Belinda Carlisle sounds amazing to this day.

I remember discovering there was a 2CD version of In Sides that featured The Box with lyrics. Still gives me chills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQM12GbZHKk

Do you now feel indestructible while you whistle too?

The first time I realized there were different releases based on location I was pissed. This was in high school for me, but I found out there were ways to get imports. The easiest way with limited amounts of success was to find a Virgin Records store. On rare trips to LA, I could find stuff as well, but that was also hit or miss to what was available. Eventually, a friend and I started our own record store and then we had access to distributors/importers directly.

The great equalizer of course was Napster. There were a few ftp accounts along the way as well. So dear children, just be thankful you have the likes of YT and other places that make it oh so much easier to enjoy music.

Oh man, Orbital was one of those groups that kept coming at you over and over and over again. No matter how much I tried to find their stuff in record stores, I'd randomly hear an absolutely crushing song I'd never heard of, inquire who made it, and inevitably find out it was Orbital or a remix of an Orbital song again. They seemed to permeate the consciousness of all of the different circles and media I frequented at the time.

Snivilisation sits in my pantheon of top-5 greatest Electronic music albums of all time.

The first time I heard "that part" in their mix of Halcyon Shot Through to Heaven on Earth I thought my head was going to crack open.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6pUyxcKrRQ

I find it outrageous that their youtube channel only has 65k subscribers.

There is no shame... I remember one period where they hit my town three times in the same year... it was gluttonous and perfect.

Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.

It is very likely the comment I'm replying to is not being obnoxious, but making a very deep cut reference to Orbital's song "Planet of the Shapes" from orbital2 that contains sample of the phrase in their comment, sampled from the movie "Withnail and I." It might also be a commentary on The Guardian, but the wording is too specific. (Sorry if I've spoiled your fun by clarifying, it was flagged when I read it, and shook loose a decades-old memory.)

We could have an absolute field day with samples, but it will get downvoted and flagged because this isn't reddit. I'll start:

Whatever happens, will happen again.

It twists in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop.

Yeah, that sample is stuck in my head many years later.

My mondegreen for this is "Even a stuffed croc tells the right time twice a day" (which, if you look at its jaws...)

I think my favorite Orbital jam is Impact USA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLaBPq-Krlk

For anyone not familiar with Orbital, if you listen to only one song, make it "Halcyon+On+On" - a timeless classic.

This song is also used in the intro to the film Hackers. To me, it set the tone for the film. In middle school, I’d run and watch the film in the morning and learn to program in the afternoon to late at night. It was such a magical song and allowed me discover similar music from the era.

A great track, but if I really had to pick only one I'd choose Lush 3.

Also... I think Halcyon+On+On is amazing, but it's based so heavily on Opus III's cover of It's a Fine Day that it borders on being a (fantastic) remix. Also interesting to look back at the earlier remix of the original recording of that song by A Guy Called Gerald.

I was born in 1991 and have no perspective of the 90s techno/rave scene, but I somehow discovered Orbital around 2008, I think while looking around for electronica albums mastered in 5.1 to try out on my new surround speakers.

I listened so much to The Alltogether (2001), which I guess I preferred over their older stuff because I found it a little more dynamic and exciting. For the longest time, I had no idea they were such a cornerstone of the genre's history!

I was pretty thrilled to discover that they were back at it in recent years. I'm glad they're doing well. I have no point to make, just sharing my own personal anecdote despite being so far removed from the scene that originally drove their fame.

A seminal act for sure. I’m old enough to have been at the raves, this would always be played in the car on the way home [1]. Heady days!

[1] https://youtu.be/d5vGjCoQM1s?feature=shared

The fact we do not refer to them as Sir Phil and Sir Paul is a travesty.

Edit: to add I feel the same way there is no Sir Alex Patterson. but I'm just a Yank that doesn't care about some foreign monarchy, so what do I know

Tangentially related: It took me far too long in my early teens to realize that Orbital and The Orb were not the same or related.

A bad time for self-catelogued MP3 files.

Orbital's first album and The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld were the first CDs I purchased in the start of my ventures away from geetars and screaming dudes and their annoying angst or the whiny country bumpkins crying over their girlfriends taking their dog and truck

I always wondered who copied whom: did Orbital take the orb or the Orb the orbital - names not sound? Or was it all coincidence?

Both are great, my preference was always for The Orb - no idea why!

Two totally different words, and two totally different sounds. The only similarity is the have the same first 3 letters.

Do you also get confused by The Cure and Curve?

I adore Orbital, and they have been the soundtrack for much of my life. Imagine my shock when Mike Myers made a triumphant return in The Pentavirate, and the whole series was scored by Orbital! Sent me on a weeklong kick/trance.

Also, if you have not listened on some sort of mind-altering substance, you are seriously depriving yourself of the experience of both the music and the substance. Even a couple drinks will get you into the right spot, if your tolerance is low.

I'm not the OP, but I'd recommend the music for The Pentavirate, but not the show.

I would recommend the music, and only the parts of the show that include Mike. He's as excellent as ever, the rest of the show is pretty generic.

"In sides" got me through University. Spent so much time coding to that album...

Orbital and Banco de Gaia on repeat soundtracked my CS degree. Both artists’ work from that era still hold up.

Like many others in this thread, I've enjoyed a ton of Orbital. My introduction was when 99x in Atlanta played "The Box" a few times and I picked up a copy of In Sides. Also, like many, I spent many a late night learning to code with some Orbital album as my soundtrack.

So many great tracks listed here and I'll add another: one of my personal favorites is their collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti "Beached" from the 2000 film The Beach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRgfm0osig

Snivilisation is their underrated masterpiece IMNSHO.

I agree that Snivilisation is their best, right above the Brown album. But many great cuts even on weaker albums

Absolutely - I didn't meant to diminish their other albums as I'm a huge fan of everything up to In Sides, and quite a bit after that, I just think Snivilisation doesn't get nearly enough praise.

I praise it as much as I can :)

The piano in Kein Trink Wasser followed by the keyboards... sublime. I adore this album from start to finish. With Dwr Budr from In Sides as a sequel, since both titles refer to water.

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