A work in progress since summer 2004, the debut album from ex-Orbital maestro PAUL HARTNOLL is all about him finding new creative feet to land on.
“I wanted to do something different from what I’d done before, that was the whole point of not doing Orbital…It just took time to discover exactly what that was”
What ‘that’ is, in terms of these nine tracks might constitute a development in Hartnoll’s creative potential, but it’s Hartnoll’s conscious desire to want to shift focus that best explains why there’s times when it sounds like he’s on shaky ground.
Though the entire album was written on electronic equipment, there’s a 32-piece choir and a full orchestra on opener ‘Haven’t We Met Before’, and individual instruments play classical parts to give the record a more organic feel.
Many of the tracks explore the area between ambient techno and classical music: the minimalist loops sound ‘arranged’ rather than mixed, but still with a layered feel. The slow tempo adds to the exploratory sense of experimentation, and in places, classical phrasing dominates.
The warm pulse of ‘Simple Sounds’ has pipes/recorders dancing in the ambient surges, and ‘The Unsteady Waltz’ is based on minimalist piano sounds
Certainly, pieces like these soundscapes represent a shift away from the head-mashing deep dance grooves that Paul and Phil are loved and revered for. There’s a strong set of cinematic influences in place, and as a soundtrack or film score it makes more sense. The electronic components of ‘The Ideal Condition’ however, make use of much the same methods and modes of sonic assault as Orbital did. Loops frequent the pulse, and that crystal clear, ethereal trance sound runs right through the record.
For all Hartnoll’s efforts to alter direction, the pull of the beat twice sucks him back into the kind of areas where he established himself as a legend. These ‘lapses’ will take you a split second to identify as the album’s best tracks.
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The Cure’s ROBERT SMITH makes an unlikely but effective guest vocal appearance on one of them four tracks in, for the head-swimming brain sucking ‘Please’. His slightly altered vocal style is the perfect foil for the mind-swerving speedway of racing sirens, broken beats and splintered loops that simmer in tandem with the song. The lyrics could almost tell the tale of the record as a search for inspiration, exploding as they do after a period of drifting instrumentation.
There’s also the scorching ‘Patchwork Guilt, a classic Trance Europe Express-stylo slow building anthem, with choral mantras that come in waves. Suddenly, there drops a blurred breakbeat that swerves as it propels the heady pulse along a luminous tunnel of digitised cyberspace. Magic!
Elsewhere, the scratched melancholy of ‘Aggro’ burns through the thoughts, lurching and self-destructing beautifully over a chiming beat full of reverb. Again, the lyrics hint strongly at artistic self-discovery. It’s there somewhere in the double-meaning of the words.
Though innovation is practically Hartnoll policy when it comes to making music, the presence of trance-d out electronica is where this album succeeds. For full cinemascopic appreciation though, it might well be wise to tamper with your attention span.
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