Scenestar

ARTICLE BY THOMAS KELLEY
PHOTOS BY KENNY McKENNY

It’s been a long minute since we last connected with electronic dance duo, Orbital. 2012 to be exact. A lot has changed in the music landscape since then, especially with the rise of the “EDM” acronym along with its candy dance floor anthems, which have fully penetrated just about every facet of pop culture. It makes reconnecting with Orbital that much more relevant as they were one of the original trailblazers of electronic rave culture. Their latest album release, the searing Monsters Exist, boldly explores the unsettled spirit of our times — where technology is turning society into pure binary conflicts — by acknowledging painful divisions (e.g. Brexit, Facebook, geopolitical everything, etc.) and asking us to get on with it.

It’s angrier than Orbital have ever been. But it’s also more alive than they’ve ever been. Songs feel like they came out more easily, and quickly and naturally than in the past. That gives Monsters Exist a fluid but apocalyptic sound that some longtime fans may struggle with at first. Not to fear, because Orbital’s sweet, optimistic melodies and rhythms, made all the brighter by these abrasions, are still here to take you by the hand, and lead you through the end of the world as we’ve known it.

Taking their new live show on the road, with an American tour that comes to L.A. this Saturday, we talked to Paul Hartnoll, the younger half of Orbital, to talk about monsters, existence and what it means to embrace one’s inner Obiwan.

SS: Monsters Exist still sounds very Orbital, but it also has a bolder, darker sound to my ears. What was your sonic strategy on this album?

Paul Hartnoll: The title came quite early on, actually through working a bit on a documentary, I sort of hit a point where it was about animal weapons, and how animals grow antlers and things like that, and incise and cut each other up. And it got to the point in the documentary where it said, “Now let’s come to the most dangerous animal of all.” And it showed you a big nuclear missile and the human race. It was like, “Yeah, of course!”

That’s when the title track and the title all kind of threw itself together. I thought that’s a really good thing to hang this album on. Because there were different thoughts going around. One was to write a very angry album in the style of the Dead Kennedy’s or Crass, sort of really poking a finger at the world. There was sort of the other angle, of going back to what rave music originally did, and that’s sort of, “Yeah, we don’t agree with you. We don’t like it.” It’s sort of like the original hippies as well. “We’re just going to go live a counter culture lifestyle. We’re just going to go over here and do our own thing.” That was the other option. That sort of peaceful protest is often very strong and powerful as well. If you cheer people up, that can work.

But it ended up somewhere in the middle. It ended up being more of a score I think, for the times, rather than telling people what to think or telling people to run away from what’s going on.

SS: For your last album, Wonky, I know you were getting really into vintage synthesizers and analog. Did you continue to push using vintage synths on Monsters Exist in terms of sound design?

PH: Yeah, it’s still tons of hardware synths. I’ve just been doing that all day today, actually. It’s been great. I’ve been writing and sketching the composition onto a laptop, and today I’ve been busting that all out onto my favorite old synths, and it’s just been, what a joyful day. Just before I was messing around with two big old new synths actually. It’s been brilliant. It’s amazing how alive everything becomes. Don’t get me wrong, I love laptops and I love the fact that I’ve got so much software on my laptop. I could make albums and just live with just one laptop. But at the same time when you turn away from the screen and start looking at all these big old synths, it’s so much fun as well.

SS: What are a couple of the synthesizers that you were playing with today?

PH: The Moog Voyager. The Oberheim Xpander. The Jomox SunSyn Mk2. What else have I been playing with. Those are the main three. Oh, and the new Waldorf Quantum and the new Sequential Circuits Prophet X. Apart from the Voyager, they’re all polyphonic synths. I often write in the laptop, or “box,” and then bust it out. That way you got the discipline. You’re not thinking so much about sound and production, as much as the composition. If you’re doing it in the box you’ve got to get it right. Whereas sometimes you can suffer the thing of getting great sounds, but where is the music?

SS: What are some of the songs on the album that you’re particularly proud of?

PH: I like them all, so it’s hard to pick. But I really like “The Raid,” that’s my favorite dystopian moment on the album. That’s the proper walk down the dark alleys of humankind. I like the massive dirty epic-ness of that. I also like the hysterical feeling of “Hoo Hoo Ha Ha.” It sounds jolly. It sounds kind of happy. But it’s kind of bit unhinged. The chords go around in a funny angle. It’s like nothing quite fits together properly. It’s that nightmare where you wake up and you find you’re in an abandoned theme park on a rollercoaster that you know hasn’t got an end. You know you’re going to die. You’re coming off the tracks. But at the moment it’s fun. That’s kind of a bit Brexit-y as well I think.

SS: I also feel a lot of the songs on the album are constantly changing. Like with “P.H.U.K.,” “Tiny Foldable Cities,” or “The End Is Nigh,” which I adore. They are taking the melodies, breaking them into crystalline reflections upon each other, and turning them in surprising ways. You’re still on the path, you’re not throwing them off the path. But they keep you guessing.

PH: That’s that thing, if you go for a walk through old bits of London, with no particular agenda. You walk past a little laneway, there may be some cobble with a gas lamp, you just have to go down it. You know what I mean? It’s like that with writing music. “I just got to go off here.” And it’s lovely. And often times you go and end up right back where you were again. I do that a lot with music. I do that kind of ABA, where you start with an idea, where you go off but then you go back because you miss it.

SS: Going to the themes you guys have explored with your albums, hovering between optimism and caution, in terms of Monsters Exist, Brexit is a big component for you from a personal emotional place, right? But I also noticed with this album that there is more tension than before, but that heightens the contrast and brings out more beauty than ever before I think.

PH: I think that’s just called getting better at writing music. I do feel more like Obiwan Kenobi than Luke Skywalker these days. It’s just I’ve been doing it so long. I feel confident in what I’m doing now. Whereas I think when you’re younger, after some success, you can fall into a trap, of trying to keep replicating that and keeping people happy and juggling plates. Whereas now I don’t juggle plates. I just do what I want. But in a good way, I do what makes me feel good or makes me feel something, and then I can’t wait to get it out there.

To be continued…

You can see Orbital live in Downtown Los Angeles when they headline the Belasco Theater on Saturday, December 8, in support of latest release Monsters Exist.