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Family - Wed Feb 24
Whatever type of music you like, be it hardcore, hip hop, acoustic roots, indie pop, whatever … statistically speaking, 90% of it probably isn’t very good. A bell curve swoops upward from the dreck, cradles the middling material (the majority), and trails off into a small amount of the really good stuff. Dance music is no different, with DJs and producers of varying stripes taking up most of the middle ground, releasing a few singles, maybe one or two good albums, and then vanishing into IT or making soundtracks for commercials. Only a handful could really be classed as innovators or have an output consistent enough to have a genuine impact on the form. And while no one in contemporary dance music (or pop music in general) could rationally claim to be an ‘original’, it is possible to get very close to that ideal, and UK rave veterans Orbital have proved themselves enough to be considered closer than most.
Family tonight feels a little different than usual. For starters, the mean age is late-20s, early-30s, and there are enough English accents floating around to provide a voice cast for a Dickens audio book. As brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll trigger proceedings with an extended rendition of Out There Somewhere, a few scattered dancers at the edge of the crowd look as though they haven’t stopped moving since that first bush doof they attended in ’94. That’s OK though, because if anyone is going to instill nostalgia for a time when rave music could still be both intelligent and hedonistic, it’s Orbital. Against a giant electronic backdrop and shielded by towers of synthesizers, the trademark bobbing headset torches conduct a symphony of Orbital’s biggest tunes – Impact, Lush, Satan, Belfast, and a brilliantly updated version of the iconic Chime. The unique Orbital breakbeat rhythms are bigger than ever (no doubt thanks to some additional PA equipment brought in just for tonight), and despite some of these tracks being up to 20 years old, their clever composition allows them to sound surprisingly current. The pace slows slightly for the Opus III-sampling Halcyon, which then provides a platform for the duo’s old festival trick of dropping in samples of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is A Place On Earth and Bon Jovi’s You Give Love A Bad Name. It’s fun to hear again, but I’d happily forgo it in favour of more of their own songs (almost every tune tonight has been expanded to 10 minutes, reducing the tracklist for their 90 onstage minutes.) A brief break precedes an encore featuring the ominous UK #11 chart hit The Box, one of the most incongruous tunes to ever scrape a mainstream top 10; and then a finale of Doctor?, the Doctor Who theme cover that, while not as great as the original Radiophonic Workshop piece, still blitzes the abomination that passes for the show’s current one. The applause that greets the brothers Hartnoll when they finish is as charged as the set itself, the old ravers like me getting just what they came for, and a few younger punters perhaps realizing that much of what they listen to sits limply in the middle of the bell curve. When you discover the really good stuff, it’s hard to go back.
TOPHER HEALY
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