Urb.com: Orbital, Q&A

Interview with Orbital’s Phil Hartnoll, for Urb.com.

On June 28^th, Orbital made a triumphant return to Glastonbury, the site of their famous 1994 headlining concert. Back then the helmet-lighted brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll, were among the earliest acts to bring electronic music to the festival. This year, Glasto celebrated its 40th anniversary and the Orbital brothers their 20th.

Never completely off the radar since breaking into the rave scene with the cassette-made “Chime” and “Satan” from their self-title debut in 1991, they broke up in 2004, after several albums of varying success (that included several collaborations with Alison Goldfrapp) to pursue individual projects; they reunited in 2009 for the Big Chill Festival.

Over the past few months they have been thrilling fans with a bombastic couple of new tracks, premiering them at some of the world’s bigger festivals including Winter Music Conference and Coachella. In addition to a spectacular live performance that is blowing up the internet, they have also been working on a new album, one track at a time. The complete product is loosely slated for release in early 2011. In the meantime, we caught up with Phil at home in Brighton, England, which apparently has “always been something of a party town, going back to the Victorian days.” At the time due to licensing sensitivities, we couldn’t discuss Matt Smith closing their set by joining them onstage for a “Doctor Who” inspired DJ set. But considering “Doctor?” from 2001’s The Altogether album, was a big part of their live performance, one could’ve guessed. We did manage to talk about the resurgence of electronica in pop music and how a volcano in Iceland led to nuptials far above Las Vegas.

Continued…

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