Orbital - Live at Glastonbury
Orbital - Glastonbury 1994. Bleep.
In the nocturnal open air of the Somerset farmlands did British dance music change forever, as Paul and Phil Hartnoll donned the 1994 Glastonbury stage in their lightup headgear, bringing the unrefusable energy of their rave origins to the masses. The whistling crowd knew, as did those at home when the festival was televised, that Orbital’s performance would enshrine dance music in the country’s modern festival culture. Over thirty years later, that pivotal moment is finally officially released in full, remastered with the open air clarity it deserves.
Peace symbols and waveforms pulsed on the screens, as dancers mimicked the movements of visuals set to tracks from Orbital’s imminent Snivilisation album, as well as their Green and Brown LPs. Earthshifting low frequencies tremble, synths glitter and chords plunk, and drums gingerly clatter in as they tease something wondrous with the breezy opener ‘Forever’. Masses of corroded synth lines soon shock and zap the chunky rhythms of ‘Sad But True’ into action, Alison Goldfrapp’s angelic vocals swinging over them.
Waves of cheers erupt when everything cuts out save for the thumping bass of ‘Impact (The Earth Is Burning)’, then “a cry for survival” prompts the track to sharpen, raze, and energise as the set dives into pure, classic, drum machine acid chaos. Vibrant arrays of percussion, alarms, and the foreboding bassline of ‘Are We Here’ transition into dreamy string loops and cascading melodic sparkles, setting up the only possible closer for the night: the ecstatic bells of ‘Chime’, its pneumatic drums clapping up a storm, its fervent strings of rave stabs prompting roars from the audience.
Orbital’s 1994 Glastonbury performance is one of dance music’s greatest “you had to be there” moments, now finally made possible for us to be there again.