Orbital 2

Very highly commended album and I bought it as a cheap throw in on a large order after a mediocre ‘In Sides’ by Orbital.  The album starts and ends with a boring 2 minute vocal loop – ‘When time becomes loop’ is quite clever but long enough.  ‘Planet of the Shapes’ is a noisy mish mash of shapes, so at least it keeps to the name.  When ‘Lush 3.1′ kicks in things are redeemed but the track doesn’t really go anywhere in the end and leads straight into ‘Lush 3.2′ which again fails to get much better than the first few bars.  Again right into ‘Impact’ which has the classical Orbital sound but sometimes becomes very harsh and loud, the same thematic continues until ‘Halcyon’, the only brilliant track on the album that begins beautifully but begins to get a little harsh again and lasts too long.

So a rather negative review, why?  Because the tracks would be good if they were cut down to 3 minutes.  The music introduces itself quickly then fails to improve, sometimes becoming tedious and loud, I found the same in ‘Out there somewhere?’ in ‘In Sides’.  I don’t know what the hype is about and much prefer smooth sounding, real electronica – Digweed, Dreadzone, this is just not kind on the ears.  4/10