Orbital: “We were banned from Top of the Pops for being utterly boring!”

In 1990, Orbital performed your debut single ‘Chime’ on Top of the Pops. Name any other two acts who appeared on the same episode.

“Snap! and Big Fun. I jumped into the audience and danced to Snap! afterwards.”

CORRECT. Apart from the Eurodance group and boyband, you could have also had Liza Minnelli and They Might Be Giants.

“Afterwards we tried to speak to Snap!, but they turned their noses up at us, so we left and went to a party Pete Tong had invited us to and were gobsmacked because Neneh Cherry and Boy George were there. We felt we’d hit the big-time!”

You performed with your keyboards’ plugs visible, mocking Top of the Pops’ miming policy…

“We were banned from Top of the Pops afterwards for six years for being utterly boring! [Laughs]. We were doing something new and ‘other’ than rock and roll, so having to do something as old-fashioned as miming your music on Top of the Pops felt like a crock of shit. I’m quite Lars von Trier about things. If it’s not happening for real, I can’t do it. They didn’t let us bring our own equipment, and had to get tables from the BBC canteen because we refused to use their fancy keyboard stands. I’d only stand there twirling a plug or playing with the on/off switches, so we stood looking awkward.”

What pseudonym did Alison Goldfrapp use for the tracks she sang on Orbital’s 1996 album ‘In Sides’?

“Auntie.”

CORRECT.

“She’s brilliant. We met because she was an acquaintance of Phil’s [Hartnoll, Orbital’s second member and his brother]. She had the voice of an angel and nonchalantly didn’t seem to care – you’d ask her to sing and she’d treat it casually like you’d asked her to make a cup of tea. She even asked us to help her start a [solo] career, but I was always looking for unconventional psychedelic hooks and was crap at working with singers at that time, so it didn’t work out. But then she met Will Gregory and Goldfrapp exploded. I remember her bringing her first album [2000’s ‘Felt Mountain’] to the studio, muttering ‘Oh yeah…done this…look’. I grabbed my Sharpie and said: ‘Sign this bloody record because when you’re famous, it’s going to be worth something’. She incredulously told me to piss off! [Laughs]”

At 2010s Glastonbury festival, you brought out Matt Smith for Orbital’s cover of the Doctor Who theme tune. In the show, what number Doctor he is?

“I know all the Doctors! You’ve got: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant… so Matt Smith is the Eleventh Doctor?”

CORRECT.

“The controversial thing is whether we’re counting Peter Cushing’s [1960s] Doctor as canon, and whether John Hurt’s War Doctor, who is supposed to come in between Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston, counts!”

Eek…just take the point and run! What was it like being joined by the, er, eleventh Doctor?

“There’s nothing more fun than walking around Glastonbury on a Saturday night with Doctor Who if you want to see people off their faces freak out. He’d never been in front of a crowd that big before and was loving it.”

As a die-hard Whovian, did you ever consider throwing your Fez into the ring to compose the music when the show was revived in 2005?

“I got vaguely close to doing it. The BBC asked me to submit a demo – which was a bit lazy and a revamp of the Orbital one that already exists – but it was a done-deal that [Who supremo] Russell T Davies would be working with composer Murray Gold. I would have loved to do it.”

On the subject of sci-fi, Orbital sampled a speech by Klingon Lieutenant Worf (played by actor Michael Dorn) from Star Trek: The Next Generation on the 1993 track ‘Time Becomes’/’Moebius’. Did Dorn ever hear it?

“I won’t say whether we did or didn’t sample it, but Michael Dorn came into a club of some DJ friends of ours, who waited for him to be on the dancefloor and then played ‘Moebius’ at him – he fell about laughing!”

Back to Glasto: its founder Michael Eavis credits your legendary NME Stage headline slot in 1994 as bringing rave to the masses…

“We were supposed to go on before Björk, but she swapped set-times with us so we could go on in darkness. Watching her go on, I lost all my bodily fluids when I heard the roar of the crowd and just thought: that’s you next. But it was amazing and Glastonbury had been craving dance music. I was there the year before when The Orb played the same slot and when they dropped ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, it was immense. I thought: ‘Somebody’s got to do this with full-on banging techno’. I didn’t know it was going to be me the year after!”

Orbital’s Tilda Swinton-featuring promo to ‘The Box’ was nominated for Best Video at the 1997 BRIT Awards. Who beat you?

“Ah you’ve got me there! We walked off in disgust as soon as we didn’t get it [Laughs]. No, we knew we weren’t going to win. The audience was cheering for each band in the category until they announced ‘and Orbital…’ and it was tumbleweed. Who beat us?”

WRONG. You were pipped to the post by the Spice Girls’ ‘Say You’ll Be There’.

“Bollocks! I nearly said them! They recorded their ‘Spice’ album in the room below ours at the Strongroom studio [in London]. We used to have our lunch watching Neighbours with Mel C. Mel C is the only DJ on the planet to have a copy of ‘Spicy’ [Orbital’s live ‘Wannabe’ remix]. She said she loved it, so I said: ‘Here you go – have it’.”

In 1997, Orbital played Lollapalooza. Which Manchester indie band claimed they once stole golf buggies before knocking your dressing room wall down on that touring festival?

“If that’s not James, I’ll eat my hat!”

CORRECT.

“They became our party buddies on that tour. It was Brits abroad gone mental. We were put in the same dressing room as them, with curtains separating us down the middle. As banter was flying through the curtain, Saul [Davies, James member] started climbing up it, so we just removed it. James would go on at 4pm, and our set was at midnight, but when we finished, they’d still be partying, bless them. They probably just smashed a dressing room wall down of another band – but thought it was ours! [Laughs]”

Reviewing Orbital’s EP ‘Times Fly’ for Select magazine in 1995, which mothership-loving musician raved: “They got a funky drummer – I’d like to play on top of it”?

“Was it Jamiroquai?”

WRONG. George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic.

“Whoa! I didn’t even know that!”

Ever meet him?

“No, I saw him at an airport once during festival season. I once sat on a flight to Japan next to Peter Hook chatting all the way – and didn’t realise it was him until we got to the gate and I saw a sign saying ‘Mr Hook’. I’ve met some mad people. I even had Ennio Morricone bless my unborn child at one point. When we played ‘Where Is It Going?’ at the Paralympic Games opening ceremony with Stephen Hawking in 2012, we discovered he [Hawking] was a trickster and funny. He even wore our torch-glasses even though he could see sod-all to feel part of the band.”

“But if we’re name-dropping the two most incredible people I’ve met were David Bowie and Kate Bush. We played with Bowie at Phoenix festival [in 1997], and afterwards, he asked us to do a remix for him and my biggest regret is turning him down because I was stressed with work – my toes are curling thinking about it!”

How many times have you asked Kate Bush to work with you now?

“Hmmmm…only once. It won’t be the last time I ask either. I’ve not given up. I asked her on the last album [2023’s ‘Optical Delusion’] because I had a big sample of hers, but she replied: ‘No, I don’t want my music taken out of context. But I do remember you from Buckingham Palace!’”

“Because we’d met at an industry soiree at Buckingham Palace and we were told we had to stay together in a group because the Queen was coming through. Then we sneaked into the other room and tried to play their harpsichord, creating this awful din! I couldn’t believe I was playing an out-of-tune harpsichord sharing a piano stool with Kate Bush, as every face you’ve ever seen on Top of the Pops turned around looking at us thinking: ‘Who’s making that fucking racket? Oh, it’s Kate Bush and some herbert!”

For a bonus half-point: In a later Select magazine feature titled ‘If Pop Was World War 2’ in 1996, comparing Britpop to historical figures, who were Orbital bizarrely likened to? For example, Noel Gallagher was compared to Stalin*

“[Laughs] Did anybody get compared to Hitler?”

Yes! Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. “Demonic, vegetarian leader of forces of darkness, hell bent on enforcing American longhairs,” according to the Select writer.

“Jesus! [Laughs] I would like to think we’d have been compared to Monty, but even by ’96, the rock ‘n’ roll world treated electronic artists suspiciously – like witches. They still thought: ‘ I don’t know what they’re doing! The music makes itself!’. As we’ve found out with AI, the music didn’t make itself. Watching all the people afraid of AI now, I think: ‘Oh yeah, that’s what you used to accuse me of in the early ‘90s!’. Possibly we were compared to some kind of V2 rocket engineers or inventors of some war-related equipment?”

CORRECT-ISH. Close enough – you were likened to Sir Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb, for being ‘Top boffins’. 

“I love discovering weird, obscure old articles. The first ever publication to print something about Orbital was our local newspaper the Sevenoaks Chronicle. Reading it recently, I wondered why all the quotes were attributed to Phil, until I got to the end where I say something like: ‘A few weeks ago I was in this paper because of the evils of acid house – and now I’m being applauded for doing an acid house record. Funny that, isn’t it?’ Then I remembered I was furious because the police had beaten the hell out of us ravers for having an illegal rave [then outlawed by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994] and the local paper had taken the side of the police!”

*Noel G was compared to Stalin because the latter was a “big-moustachioed leader of [the] biggest country in world, on whom victory depended. Many of [his] original political compadres vanished’, while the Oasis icon was judged: ’Similarly hirsute chief of world’s biggest band, on whom victory depends. First drummer not seen since last year.”

Complete the following lyrics: ‘Blaming everyone in hospitals/Blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel…’?

“Blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

CORRECT. From the track ‘Dirty Rat’ – Orbital’s 2023 team-up with Sleaford Mods.

“That’s my favourite reference to gammon without saying the words! Sleaford Mods are absolute diamonds.”

Which novel does the mother wash in the video to Orbital’s 1992 single ‘Halcyon’?

“I’d put money on it being Jilly Cooper’s Riders!”

WRONG. It’s Barbara Catlin’s Shotgun Wedding.

“Goddammit! Of course. It’s implying the poor woman in the video was unhappy with her life. That’s a piece of trivia I should have known!”

You DJ-d in a 2002 episode of medical drama ER. Which character crowdsurfs during your scene?

“That’s unfair because I didn’t watch ER so I don’t know the characters’ names!”

WRONG. It’s Dr. Jing-Mei Chen.

“We’d been doing an album launch in New York, and Phil decided he wanted to go home, but our film agent said they were happy for me to do it on my own. I remember debating with one of the actors if the Royal Family could have bumped off Princess Diana, while Maura Tierney [who played Nurse Abigail Lockhart on the show] was just tutting in the background, not having any of it! [Laughs].”

Which 2004 American teen movie uses ‘Halcyon + On + On’ for its final scene?

“Mean Girls?”

CORECT.

“That intro to ‘Halcyon’ is all over TikTok at the moment which is brilliant. I’d like the upcoming Mean Girls musical remake to use a Jon Hopkins or Bicep track for that scene, so the next generation get their ambient intro.”

You’ve composed myriad film soundtracks. What’s been the most surreal Hollywood experience?

“Probably pretending to play live in [2002] film xXx, in complete silence, with Vin Diesel walking through the crowd.”

The verdict: 6.5/10

“I wish I’d just guessed the Spice Girls for that extra point!”

Orbital’s ‘The Green Album – Live – 2024’ tour, celebrating the duo’s 1991 debt album, tales place April and May 2024. Full dates can be found here

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