Orbital: The Altogether : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If Phil and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital have a fault, it's their unwavering belief in a pop audience that will embrace pristine techno beauty as well as brainless hooks. Just to hedge their bets, on The Altogether, the Hartnolls have included both. The herky-jerky "Oi!" blends the band's lusciously thick signature synthetic chords with a Star Wars-cantina-scene horn chart and a percolating keyboard hook that's as idiotically infectious as the classic 1972 novelty tune "Popcorn." Elsewhere, Orbital fuse their divinely melodic techno with samples of everything from the Rivingtons' trash-rock anthem "Surfin' Bird" to the tweaky art metal of Tool. Among the typewriter-clacking noises of "Meltdown," you can even hear a tiny tribute to the mock-eerie theme of The Twilight Zone. Like the densest hip-hop, The Altogether could be taken as a selection of aural puns. But it sounds like a very lovely storm of electronic fire and rain.

PAT BLASHILL
(RS 879 - October 11, 2001)