Customer Reviews

Orbital 2

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is Orbitals' best album except possibly In Sides. It's really best not to compare them but call one the 'best of the older stuff' and the other 'best of the newer stuff'. The Brown Album/Orbital 2 is the best of the older stuff. It begins with the Hartnolls having fun with the Star Trek vocal sample "there is the theory of the Moebius..." from The Green album's Moebius and takes off from there. The brothers expand on the happy dance tunes of that album here; they keep the dance beats going while getting a bit more experimental with synths, sounds, and moods. The best tracks include the spacy Planet of the Shapes, the hard-hitting apocalyptic Impact (the earth is burning), the synth-saturated Remind, and of course Lush 3-1 and 3-2, which are aptly named. I strongly recommend this album, but don't listen to people who tell you that the newer material is unworthy in comparison, because that is simply not true. Start with this album if you are new to Orbital, then sample some of the newer stuff and see how you like it.

Back in 1993, when today's legendary second Orbital album named the "Brown Album" came out, it was an album with something unheard of at the time, it was a masterpiece that started a revolution. Although it's in the same vein as their first "Yellow/Green" CD, it has a very different, more complex structure.

It starts with "TIME BECOMES" a sample borrowed from Star Trek, a vocal sample spoken by Worf which goes: "there is the theory of the Moebius, a twist in the fabric of space, where time becomes a loop...where time becomes a loop" and on and on and on, almost 2 minutes of non - stop hilarious mixture of sounds ( Orbitals's humorous side, which is much more noticeable on "Snivilisation", as there are more vocal samples).

..."even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day"...
starts "PLANET OF THE SHAPES". Slow, loops up and down, left and right, and suddenly explodes into a 10 minute harsh and at moments beautiful ambient melody. "PLANET OF THE SHAPES" fades out slowly, the same way it started...

..."even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day"...
and then you're off! "LUSH 3 -1" will come at you so fast you won't know what hit you. And it gets even better! It stretches on to "LUSH 3 -2". It's calmer but it's also more intense.
Unnoticeably it flows into another 10 minute delight, the chillingly dark and scary "IMPACT (The earth is burning)". It's really beautiful, one of the best tracks on the album.

"WALK NOW..." is more different than the last four tracks. It's much calmer, and it's probably the most danceable track on the whole album. It's constantly followed with a buzz - like sound that flows in the background of the song making it really hypnotic.

"In - Sides" had the best for last, and the "Brown album does the same. "HALCYON + ON + ON" is a classic, one of Orbital's all - time best songs, and one of the most favorite of all Orbital fans. Don't get confused if you hear just too much about it, or seeing it on various soundtracks and compilations. It has that recognizable enchanting sound. You hear a piano playing over a keyboard layer with one of those beautiful smooth spaced out female vocals over a mid - tempo bass line. Another true electronic ballad from the true masters and innovators of progressive electronic music.

The album ends ("INPUT OUT") the same way it started, Orbital (brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll) having a laugh. It's another vocal sample going round and round.

With this (and "In - Sides"), Orbital elevated electronic music to a higher level, and introduced many people to electronic music, and more importantly they pawed the way for many other electronic acts.
This is truly one of the best, most important and original electronic albums ever.

Being born and raised in the city where House Music was born, and where a lot of good industrial music was made (WaxTrax!)namely Chicago, I consider myself an expert on House, Techno and good, underground music in general. You name it, I've heard it. Early 80s mixes with Kratfwerk songs, Africa Bambaata and the Soul Sonic Force, to house mixes throughout grade school and high school days, not to mention the WaxTrax! sound (Ministry, RevCo, Front 242. I've been a fan of underground dance music since before the general public was even aware of its existence. Not to mention Depeche Mode, New Order, and industrial/alternative mixes. For you youngsters out there, the term "alternative" actually meant something at one time. Anyway, once our "House Sound" made it to Europe, especially England, and then became Techno, I've loved the techno sound, and since then, I have been in perpetual search of the "perfect trance/techno sound". I have found it twice. In 1993, I bought Orbital 2, partly because I thought the CDs name was interesting, "2". Tracks 3 through 7 are as good as techno/trance gets, especially the trancey part where Track 6 (Remind) melds into track 7 (Walk Now). I mean, I've heard it ALL, AND ORBITAL 2 IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS, IT IS THE ULTIMATE IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD!!!! I have bought this CD 6 times because copies have gotten stolen, worn or whatever, and it is as good today and the day I bought it - maybe because it was before its time, or is timeless. DIVERSIONS, with remixed versions of tracks from Orbital 2 is every bit as good. Here is my list of techno/trance perfection:
ORBITAL 2, DIVERSIONS, IN SIDES(AMERICAN RELEASE #1), FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON'S ACCELERATOR, EXPANDER AND PAPUA NEW GUINEA REMIXES, HIGHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCY'S COLOURFORM, TRANCEWERK EXPRESS' TRIBUTE TO KRAFTWERK VOL.1, BLADE SOUNDTRACK TRACKS 12 AND 13 (COVER OF NEW ORDER'S CONFUSION), MOBY'S 'COME ON BABY' SINGLE, AND EARLY GOA TRANCE FROM 95-96, ORB'S 'ULTRAWORLD)
Never mind the Oakenfolds, Sashas, and Digweeds, their early stuff is OK, but mostly they put out what I refer to as "Friendly Techno", if you want the real thing, the stuff that is dark, ominous, hard-driving, tripnotic, you must go to the source, and.......if you only buy one CD in this life, make sure it's Orbital 2....

Being a relative novice in electronica and techno, I was unaware of the contributions of Orbital, as musicians, over the past 13 years. Truly one of the most rare and innovative artists of the past decade, Orbital has remained a mainstay in the genre because it has always been ahead of it: to quote madness, "one step beyond" and into a land where only it will dominate.

2 takes a more experimental and even backwards step, drawing upon a wide variety of sources to create impressive and enchanting beats. Cut-rhythms and changes in the tempo, mid-piece, are 2 dramatic changes from the old-school (and to a certain extent, the new school) rave scene. From the up-tempo and revolving rhythms of "Walk now" to the illustrious and emotionally transcendental "Halcyon + On + On", Orbital's influence can be heard in modern trance and house as a motivational and creative force to give people the experience of their life.

In many ways, Orbital 2 encapsules what dance music could and should be about: the propogation of a feeling of euphoria for the duration of the music. I, for one, feel this with each repeated listening of the cd. When most music appreciators are asked what they think when they think of 1993, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Pearl Jam instantly come to mind. But for the electronica generation, Orbital 2 is pivotal and essential.

More commonly known as the "Brown Album", "Orbital 2" is inventive, incredible, and inspiring. The only thing; It's too short. Thankfully, the sister album "Diversions" is out there for those who want more of an extended "Brown Album", though it's not the same by any means. It starts out with rather ingenius "Time Becomes", which, over the space of one minute and forty-three seconds, takes the line "...where time becomes a loop", splits in in two and makes it meet up at the end to form a perfect audio loop. From there, the second track "Planet of the Shapes" makes use of the vinyl record sample "Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day". The music in this track has slightly dark undertones and a spacy feel in parts and a good, heavy beat. Track three is the rather well known "Lush" track, "Lush 3-1"*, which merges seemlessly into the fourth track, "Lush 3-2"*. "Lush 3-2" is very dancy and uses very detached, non-descript female vocals which make it sound more euphoric. "Lush 3-2" merges seemlessly into the fifth track, "Impact (The Earth is Burning)"*. Very distant, spacy vocals of some kind are used in this track as are strange synthesized horns. In my opinion, the best part is a little past seven minutes into the song, where the clear sample "It's like a crying for survival!" is used. The sixth track, "Remind", is more uniform in chord progression than the others and relies on a large range of beats and builds quite a lot by the end. Track seven, "Walk Now..."* starts with a sampled didjiradoo, and carries with a dancy rythm and great synth beats. The eighth track, "Monday", is light, dancy and one of Orbital's more simple tracks...if you can call it simple. Track nine is probably the best known track off of this album, "Halcyon+On+On" is very spacy, detached and vocal. Infact, it is the female vocals that hold up the song. Also, this is by far the most "relaxing" of any track on any Orbital album to date. Finally, the end track, "Input Out" is much like the first track except that is does not really form a loop. It is simply two samples ("Input translation" and "Output rotation") doubled and then split in the same fashion. Interesting stuff.

* (Mixes of "Lush 3-1", "Lush 3-2", "Impact [The Earth is Burning]", and "Walk Now..." are on the "Diversions" album.)

This album, Orbital's second (obviously!), but not their second full-length release (the longish EP "Radicchio" isn't shown here), is a landmark work. Period. Anyone who has any interest in electronic music should be required to own this. From the cruel soundmangle beginning that takes off from their previous release's "The Moebius", Orbital drops us into the plink-plonk strangeness and shuffle of "Planet of the Shapes". But just when we get comfy with that, the weird voices kick up again and then...just like being shot out of a cannon...we're off into this magnificent arc of tracks that starts with 'Lush 3-1' and ends in 'Remind', going on for nearly a half-hour of solid beats and astounding electronic orchestration that rivals ever efforts by classical composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, or John Adams. And from "Radicchio", we have the remixed 'Halcyon+on+on', which uses a beautifully-manipulated vocal loop from Opus III's "It's a Beautiful Day". Everything here is museum-grade-perfection, and this makes this perhaps one of the finest full-length techno efforts by anyone, period. Essential, and along with "Snivilization", an excellent start-point for new Orbital listeners.

This has to be one of the most incredible CD's out there. The Brown Album was my first exposure to Orbital, and, honestly, none of their other CDs live up to this one. A masterpiece. When I was managing a coffeehouse in N.C., I would turn this up until conversation was at a halt, and an entire room full of people would quit talking and let the music take them out. We built a reputation on this CD, people would come in just to hear it. I listen to Rewind at least once every couple of days just to get my mind right and feel good. DO NOT LIVE LIFE WITHOUT THIS CD

I've bought 3+ copies of this album in the years since it was first released, because I keep lending it to people and it doesn't come home :-). This is by far the peak of the Hartnoll brothers' catalog of releases; only "Chime" comes anywhere close, and then only for one track. Don't *even* bother with the newer stuff. Part of what makes this album so amazing is its continuity- you put it on, and it flows mesmerizingly from one track to the next, one perfect moment after another. This is 90's rave in its pure state; made before electronic music fractured into a billion genres, the brothers put in a bit of everything, not too much of any one, and the result is far more than the sum of its parts! Rhythms vary from straight up tec-trance-style 4/4 to what might be considered breakbeat, but really is more like a slowed-down D&B beat structure. Ambient washes of lush (pun intended) sound complement and smooth selectively sparse uses of harder-edged noises. The use of sitar sounds on "Planet of the Shapes" and digeridoo on "Walk Now" (they should have called it "dance like a madman now") lends the mix a delightful trippy world-beat flavor that subtly adds to the overall sense of a musical "journey through the mind." Production is excellent; these tracks sounds good through headphones AND big hulking stacks. And you may not find the same thing, but I hear a theme throughout the album, echoing from the first bizarre intro track (a looped-over sample of Worf from ST:TNG): "There is the theory of the moebius- a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop." Put this on repeat on your CD player and you'll soon be voyaging through mindspace, as well. In a word, superb.

Orbital 2 is so great, it makes me want to make music. Especially the tracks Lush 3-2 and Remind. Those, along with Halcyon + On + On make this CD worth owning for anybody, I don't care what your musical tastes.

This album is great.
I like very much the song "Impact (The Heart is Burning)", it's a beautiful masterpiece. I don't want to say better or worst, simply beautiful.
Very recommendable, specially for the electronic music lovers.