Orbital
"Snivilisation" marks the first time Orbital have named one of their albums, but it also breaks new ground for the band in other ways. In addition to generally having a more varied sound than its predecessors, "Snivilisation" features vocals on a couple of tracks. A duo comprised of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, Orbital have proven to be one of the most innovative new electronic bands to emerged in recent years. Their music is primarily instrumental, and knows no musical boundaries. Orbital are one of the best live electronic acts around and have toured America as part of the Communion and NASA tours. The live shows feature the Hartnoll brothers stationed behind mounds of electronic gear, twisting and maniplating their music in new and exciting ways. Though light years from a traditional rock show, Orbital's performances show that electronic music can reach the same level of energy and spontaneity. The group will be touring America later this year, after which they will begin work on a new LP. The following is an interview with Phil.
Why did you choose to give this album a name?
When we wrote it, we went into our little room and only had a couple of tracks that we had previously done. What we tried to do was write it from beginning to end, first track first, second one second, and do it in a linear fashion that way. The other two were more of collections of stuff that we had done throughout the years. So this one had a bit more of an underlying thing, not a concept by any means. Just undertones of a sort of discontentment which is what we were feeling at the time. We felt justified in ourselves to give it a title.
How long did "Snivilization" take to make, and how does this compare to the previous albums?
About 6 months, I'd say. The second one took about a year and a half, and the first one was made up of stuff that we had done. When we got our record deal we had quite a few good tracks already, from when it was our hobby. The second one took about a year by the time we'd actually got it together.
It sounds a bit different from your other albums, did your approach differ this time around?
It definitely shows a lot more of our external influences from other areas of music. We've got a new sampler which enables us to do things that we've never been able to do before. So I think that's made a bit of a difference, though not that much. It's an Emax 3. It's got good features in it.
Do you use digital multitrack recording at all?
No we don't, we still work on an Atari with C-Lab. It's all stuck together with bits of gaffer tape and tends of be a bit archaic, actually. We definitely need an upgrade. The only thing we use the computer for is the sequencing, really. What I would like to do is hard disk recording, it would be ideal for us. We really prefer to sit there and jam away for a half an hour and then shove that on the hard disk and then edit it and structure it that way. That's an exciting and different way to do it.
Do you have to use a studio to record or do you have everything you need?
What we do is hire a little room over a commercial studio that's all soundproofed and secure and just put all our stuff in there and record the same way we always have. We don't go into a real studio. We get budgets from our record company to record the LPs but we prefer to put that into equipment. After we've finished a track, it just seems senseless to go into a bigger studio and record it all again. You don't learn anything.
How long does is normally take to finish a track?
Sometimes we might get a really good sequence and that will be enough to spur us on and quickly do a track within a couple of days or something. Normally we slog away at it for a couple of weeks, or a good week of heavy slogging away, and then spend another week sort of tidying it up. It all varies, because you can go in there in a particular mood and do a track quite spontaneously. There's no sort of common thing that we do when it comes down to the composing. There's no set rules as to who does what.
Do you ever find yourselves spending too much time on a song?
Yeah, you can get really weighed under and too obsessive about things that don't matter. You find yourselves sort of lost within it.
How did you come to use Alison for vocals on the album?
She's a friend of mine actually, and I didn't even realize that she could sing. But I was at a party one day and one of our other mates said "oh, you know Allison can sing." So I went up to her and said if you can sing why don't you come down and have a go. We put the headphones on her, gave her a metronome and she just wailed for about 3/4 of an hour and we put it onto DAT and left it alone for a while, actually, because we couldn't really work anything out with it. WE were just plodding along doing tracks and then though "oh, I wonder if that fits" and we picked out bits that we like and sampled them and thought if it works we'll put it in. So we were using her as a source of a voice, really. It was really a casual affair, it just came out really.
Do you have any desire to work more collaboratively with a vocalist in the future?
It would be nice to but whenever we've tried to do that it's been a bit odd. Maybe we're not used to it. The creative approach to doing a track is always undefinable, it's not cut and dry. We find it much better to just DAT whatever we want and go back to it at a later date. but it might be quite nice to maybe structure a song with a vocalist
How did the Communion and NASA tours differ?
The first one, with Meat Beat Manifesto and Ultramarine, was Meat Beat asking us come over and support them, basically, as we though it was a brilliant thing and we like Ultramarine. That went fine, no pressure on us at all, because we were supporting. Last year, it came to be touring time again and me and Paul wanted to put together more of a thing like we'd done in England, getting a few people that we like and coming around as sort of a traveling club idea, really. So that's why we thought it would be nice to hook up with some American club, which is how "See The Light" ended up. Moby was suggested at the last minute so it was more of a diverse cross-section of the electronic world, and we thought OK, let's try it. And we asked Richard James because he's our mate and it seemed like quite a laugh. Then London Records suggested Vapour Space, who we'd never even heard of before. The name just suggested to us that it was an Altern 8 sort of thing, so we thought it was a hardcore thing but obviously we were pleasantly surprised when we found out that it was Mark Gage. He was a real bonus to the whole thing really. But it was very, very different from the Meat Beat one because it was more of trying to do a traveling club, so it worked in some places and in some places it didn't work. With a lot of people on the bill it's quite difficulty because of the times the venues close, it hard to turn it into a club and have so many bands playing as well. This year we're going to try to do a similar sort of thing.
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Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
