A few weeks ago I mentioned for me anyway, the long player really didn't work for dance music that it wasn't designed for listening to 10 -14 tracks in a row by the same artist and that I tended to lose interest after maybe four or five tracks. There are the odd exceptions but as a whole I stand by those thoughts.
Another realm where for me dance collectives, duos, whatever are at their least effective is the live environment. This again is a personal opinion and again their are exceptions. I can hear people saying " you're talking shite Drew I saw the Chems, Leftfield or whoever and they were absolutely brilliant " and they probably were but on the whole I get bored watching a few guys behind sequencers, keyboards and laptops producing dance music while the occasional guest vocalist takes to the stage to sing a couple of numbers and head off again.
There is one duo who nailed the live experience with dance music and that is the follically challenged brothers with the light up specs, Orbital. For me, live they are as exciting as any band can be. It has a lot to do with the crowd who are perpetually on a high when Orbital come on and some of it is to do with the light show but without tunes with the power of Chime or Are We Here or the beauty of Belfast the experience would not be there.
A few years ago they released a double cd/dvd set of their legendary Glastonbury performances which although the sound quality is less than perfect in parts on it is as good an illustration of them live as you are ever likely to get without actually being there.
Here is a track from that set which was recorded in 2002.
Orbital - Funny Break (Weekend Ravers)
4 comments:
Big fish/little fish/cardboard box.
Hands aloft
Orbital are officially one of my favourite bands of all time, Insides one of my favourite albums. But Ive a lot of time for the Chems albums too, they have album shaped albums if you know what I mean.
Where you from? What you on?
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