It's a balmy Saturday night on Worthy Farm, Somerset, in
1994. Paul and Phil Hartnoll, two shaven-headed techno
brothers from Sevenoaks, are celebrating "a top blag".
Leftfield, arguably the band of the moment, have pulled out
of Glastonbury at the eleventh hour and Orbital have been
handed the chance to send 40,000 sunburned festival-goers
back to their tents with 'Chime' ringing in their ears. It's the
coveted closing set on Glastonbury's second stage and
Paul, the younger of the pair, is already getting butterflies as
he watches an apprehensive Bj?rk limbering up with some
pre-stage deep-breathing exercises. "Phhhwwww!!" exhales
the elfin one, glancing around nervously. "Phhhwwww!!"
Plastic Dreams - Orbital (2/6)
Fuck me, Paul Hartnoll thinks to himself, this is really
scary. He looks at the never-ending sea of people, the
darkness creeping across the sky, the sheer
overwhelming vastness of it all - and then throws up on
the grass.
It's 1994 and, for the most part, Glastonbury still thinks
live dance music is a contradiction in terms. OK, The
Orb have done it a few times. Underworld have played
in a tiny field. But it's like that annoying roadie's been
telling the pair all day long: "What exactly do you do?
Twiddle a few knobs on your DAT player...?" So when
Orbital kick-start their first tune, one phrase keeps
cycling round in Paul's head. "Get it right. Get it right. Get
it right." To say that they do is a bit like saying Picasso
was quite handy with a paintbrush. Trademark beams
shooting from their glasses, Orbital take their cues from
the crowd, picking up on sections that work and
spinning them into giddy euphoria. Jamming on stage,
they draw out keyboard lines for an eternity, or drop
them in later to mind-scrambling effect. And when the
final notes of 'Chime' fade away, the brothers Hartnoll
can't believe the roar 40,000 people can produce. "We
were so happy," remembers Phil. "We just had a little
dance together. It felt like we were little children again.
We used to do this funny little dance before we got into
the bath. That whole feeling came back."
THE pre-bath dance was something of a ritual growing
up in Sevenoaks. "We'd be doing the bumps, banging
our bums together," says Paul. "And we'd have this little
song going..." "Psh-ke-bum! Psh-ke-bum!" offers Phil,
helpfully. "He always had the end with the taps,"
blushes Paul. They moved to Sevenoaks, in the Kent
commuter belt, when Phil was eight, Paul just four. Their
dad, a plasterer by trade, had bought his own house, a
ramshackle place stuffed with books and badly in need
of modernisation. They were happy enough, but it was
while living here that Paul got The Fear. "When I was
little I'd just wake up screaming," says Paul. "I used to
lie in bed in mortal terror hearing this spring noise.
Boing...! Boing...! I knew what it was. It was a giant slinky
thing bouncing up the stairs." Paul can pinpoint the
moment the nightmares started. He was watching an
old movie on TV. It was a comedy, a horror skit. But
what freaked Paul out was the organ. Not just the
spooky Bach music, but the way the keys moved of
their own accord. When he saw that, he screamed
loudly enough to wake the dead. "After that I wouldn't
go upstairs alone, even in daylight," says Paul. "There
was something wrong about that house. I never saw a
ghost there, but I felt there was something Amityville
Horror about it. The strangest thing was, I ended up
making a career out of getting keyboards to play
themselves. It's almost like trying to exorcise my fear."
Long before either of them picked up a sampler, Paul
and Phil had both been into punk. They did the things
punks did: shaving their heads into mohicans, parading
round Sevenoaks with a ghetto blaster, sharing ten
Bensons and half a bottle of Bacardi in the park. Once,
Phil decided to bleach his hair. He knew what he
wanted: two white streaks, one on either side of his
head. "I was like, bleach? Domestos? Makes sense..."
Phil winces. "That pure raw bleach just stung like mad!
My hair was just reduced to these frazzled white bits."
His best friend at the time, Jim Whiteleg, remembers
him as a bit of a loose cannon. "His parents would let
him dye his hair and draw over his clothes. Before
music, art was a big thing for him." It was to be seven
years before Paul got his first proper mohican, a
tasteful combination of three pink and black stripes.
Plastic Dreams - Orbital
(3/6)
IN 1988, the abandoned warehouses of King's
Cross were a good place to look for that
newfangled "rave" music (it's where Bagleys and
The Cross are today). Hippies, crusties and
students flocked to huge warehouse parties
thrown by The Mutoid Waste Company. They
specialised in auto sculptures, and drove through
the crowd in Mad Max vehicles that looked like
motorised skulls, living the post-apocalyptic
nightmare for real. In one corner were fire-jugglers
and graffiti artists. In another, an acid house
sound system strobed away. Aciiieeed!!
Aciiieeed!! The Hartnolls were already aware of
house music (they'd heard the raw ingredients
before - hi-nrg, disco, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire -
and Paul had caught the tail-end of Danny
Rampling's Shoom) but suddenly they began to
see it as a solid movement. "I was drawn to acid
house," says Phil, who met his wife Rachel at a
Mutoid Waste party. "I just liked the whole idea of
it. All that 'You're trying to chat up my bird' stuff
disappeared. With E, a lot of people's barriers
came down. It was like doors were opening."
Despite the madness of the Mutoid Waste
Parties, Paul's best nights were spent at
Brighton's Zap club. "They used to stamp you
with an anchor, so you felt like Popeye, and you
could go in and out as you wanted. You'd get hot
and sweaty, and charge at the sea. The beach
was full of people smoking fags and throwing
pebbles."
These were hand-to-mouth times for Orbital and
Phil spent most the 80s living in squats. "I had this
ideology - they're empty houses, why can't we
use them?" he explains. The first squat Phil
opened up was a boarded-up semi in the North
London suburb of Wood Green, complete with
time-warp 50s decor. A crowbar stashed under
his coat, Phil forced his way in and changed the
locks. But the neighbours called the police, and
next thing he knew he was crushed in behind the
door: "Fuck off! Fucking lowlife!" They turfed him
out, but 20 minutes later he was back. By way of
escapism, he'd slave away with his saxophone,
fantasising about joining a jazz band. Thankfully,
he soon traded the sax for a drum machine.
Squatting with him at the time was photographer
Mark Hakansson. "I remember we were living in a
tower block," says Mark. "Phil came home with
his first drum machine. I was like, 'Oh Phil, why are
you wasting your money, man?' I really had to eat
my words!"
Bored, Hakansson and Phil ended up travelling
to New York in the mid-80s. The two friends hung
out there for a few months, staying at the Chelsea
Hotel (where Sid Vicious murdered Nancy
Spungen) and seeing rappers like Run DMC in
the emerging hip hop clubs. "We were working
illegally," remembers Mark. "At one stage Phil
was working in a really crappy supermarket in
Penn Station. You know the ones in Taxi Driver,
those weird all-night places run by Italians." Back
in London, Phil and Paul started making New
Order-type pop with a guitar, a sequencer and a
drum machine. All the same, it was hardly
serious. But then came another life-changing
event for Phil. He was on his way to a rave with
his mates, some of them tripping on acid. They
were bombing along the motorway in a battered
old car and, before long, one joker decided he
needed to take a leak. They stopped in a lay-by,
he peed, and the rave-bound crew set off again.
As they pulled onto the motorway, Phil realised
the driver hadn't picked up enough speed, but it
was too late... a car slammed into the back of
them. Phil felt like he was seeing the whole crash
in slow motion.
They went flying across the road. The second car
flipped over once. Then again, and again - until it
smashed into the barrier and came to a halt.
Petrol was pissing everywhere. "Cars came
whizzing past, catching the debris of the other
cars, and they were crashing too. The nightmare
didn't stop," he says. On a childhood holiday in
Florida, Phil had been in a boating accident. The
boat's engine had exploded, shooting huge
flames over the passengers. Years later, trapped
in that car, Phil remembered the boat - just as a
bloke with a cigarette in his mouth came over to
help. "I was going, 'Put the cigarette out! Put the
cigarette out!'" says Phil. "I just didn't want to be
burned again. I thought it was going to end in an
explosion like you see in the films." Phil and his
friends escaped unhurt, but could not get home
until morning. He and one other guy found
themselves sitting in a breaker's yard in their
crunched car. "We were sitting there all night
thinking how lucky we were," says Phil. "It makes
you think, What the hell? - you've got to try for
things in life. You never know what's going to
happen. Nothing could be as bad as that. What
could go wrong with a band, apart from it failing?"
Plastic Dreams -
Orbital (5/6)
The Hartnolls recorded 'Chime' in 1989,
and took the name Orbital from the
motorway that had been central to the
rave scene in the South-East: the M25.
They pressed up 1,000 copies on
Jazzy M's Oh-Zone label, which sold
out in two weeks. Jazzy M signed the
track over to London Records, who
would later release the Orbital albums.
"It was a shock at the time," says Paul.
"We didn't really understand the idea of
licensing. It just seemed like a funny
way to be going on." 'Chime' became a
club hit, and that meant bookings.
Everyone else just did PAs - a DAT
and a couple of dancers - but the
Hartnolls were used to seeing 80s
electronic bands like Cabaret Voltaire,
and just assumed Orbital would play
live too. The Shamen, indie rockers
turned ecstasy evangelists, were also
trying to tear apart the rock gig to create
"a cataclysmic culture clash" on the
dancefloor. Their night was called
Synergy, and at the end of 1989 the
Shamen booked Orbital. Paul and Phil
had only played live once - in
Sevenoaks - but when they played
'Chime' everyone cheered in
recognition. Hmm, thought Paul, that
record must be doing quite well. It was.
'Chime' went into the singles charts at
number 17 and soon Orbital were
making a reluctant Top Of The Pops
appearance in anti-Poll Tax T-shirts.
PHIL married rachel when Orbital was
still just a motorway. They were sitting in
a greasy spoon, saying they couldn't
imagine getting married, joking about it.
"Yeah," said Phil. "But I wonder what it'd
be like if we did?" It turned into a battle
of wills, a dare. They wed in
Manchester with a couple of Rachel's
friends as witnesses and spent their
reception wandering around the
Arndale shopping centre with a bottle of
champagne. They'd spent just 28 days
together. The marriage meant Phil was
always the family man to Paul's youthful
beer monster. But the success of
Orbital's 'Green' and 'Brown' albums
soon meant they were touring more and
more - even before the 1994
Glastonbury blag, there was the Midi
Circus (a roving tour with Megadog and
The Drum Club). "Orbital were very
quiet," remembers Megadog's Bob
Dog. "Other bands were doing the
loony stuff, great hoovering noises and
the rest. But Phil was married with kids,
definitely the dad, and Paul was quite
shy. My main memory is that Paul had a
terrible thing before he went on stage -
he always had to go to the loo. In those
days schedules were like iron. We'd be
like, Right! Orbital are due on now!
Where's Paul? He's gone to the loo?
But... Phil's already out there!" Towards
the end of the 1994 tour, Phil's three kids
- Louis, Milo and Conrad - were playing
up: fighting, arguing, tearing around the
house like whirlwinds. Rachel was left to
cope on her own, with Phil feeling guilty
in a Holiday Inn in Glasgow. On the
phone, Rachel said "a lot of things she
probably didn't mean". Things like: I
can't take this anymore. It's not worth it.
And: You'll have to get a normal job. "It
was the only time I nearly smashed up
a hotel room in a rock 'n' roll sense,"
recalls Phil. "I couldn't stand it." Phil's
idea of "hotel trashing" is a testament to
how completely un-rock 'n' roll Orbital
really are. In a rage, he smashed up the
phone and hurled a cup at the wall. But
it didn't smash - it just went "thunk!" and
sunk into the plasterboard wall. Phil
later persuaded his tour manager to
ring the hotel and apologise.
But Orbital are hardly your average
rock pigs, and signing on for
Lollapalooza - America's 'Woodstock
on wheels' music festival - was a real
culture shock. In the summer of 1997
they rolled into a different town every
other night for three months - or rather,
into a huge out-of-town amphitheatre in
the middle of nowhere. On stage, Paul
and Phil soon realised they were
playing to people who didn't know the
first thing about 'electronica' - or about
these alien English siblings. Among the
headliners was rapper Snoop Dogg,
who used to make the journey from
hotel to venue in an armoured car. Phil
and Paul would watch it roll on to the
site, accompanied by a gaggle of
Nation Of Islam members clad in dark
suits. Snoop would hop out, and his
band of hangers-on would watch him
play basketball. Once the brothers went
over to talk to the driver of Snoop's
tank. He showed them round the
vehicle, including the stash of tear-gas
canisters. Handy, next time Puff Daddy
comes after you with a bazooka... "I
mean, how far removed from music can
you get?" says Phil in disbelief. "I know
the background behind it, but it seemed
the total opposite of acid house culture.
Very aggressive." Acid culture is still
very central to Orbital's music. Their
new album, 'The Middle Of Nowhere',
repeats acid's trick of being wildly
experimental and dancefloor-friendly at
the same time, by turns coolly synthetic
and fiercely squelching.
Plastic Dreams -
Orbital (6/6)
Typically, though, the title arrived almost by
accident. One day last year, Phil came into
their studio - a techno Starship Enterprise
hidden away in East London - with a picture
one of his kids had drawn. A tiny house
entitled 'The Middle Of Nowhere' seemed to
sum up, says Phil, "standing on top of a hill in
the Lake District and going, 'Thank God! No
phones, no electricity'; just you, the wind and
the weather." Around that time, Phil did feel
like escaping to nowhere in particular. He
was going into overload - worrying about life,
the album, his children. He wanted to run
away and ignore everything. One night, he
was watching a crappy, straight-to-video
remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
The line "nowhere to run, nowhere to hide"
lodged in his head. He spent months
looking for a video copy to sample (for the
album track 'Know Where To Run') - only to
find he had completely imagined the tagline.
Phil's dark mood seems strangely at odds
with the music on the album, the Hartnolls'
happiest and most club-friendly outing since
1993's Brown album. "We'd been trying to
make a happier album with lots of short
tracks for years," agrees Paul. "We've got
the happier element this time, but the short
tracks? They went by the wayside again!"
PAUL has one last story that explains how
Orbital got where they are today. It's a story
about Paul Weller - probably the artist least
likely to influence a groundbreaking dance
act - and a 'mystery' housebreaker. At one
point in the early 80s, Paul Hartnoll secured
another of his famous "blags". It was thanks
to his mate, really. He was a bit of a
troublemaker, a compulsive shoplifter. But
over the previous few months the two
13-year-olds had started a band together.
They were just daft punks really, rehearsing
in the Hartnolls' garage, but Paul's
light-fingered mate happened to mention the
band to his social worker. She thought a
hobby was "just what he needed". So when
she organised a day trip to a proper
recording studio, she said Paul could come
along too. There, Paul Weller and The Jam
were recording the B-side of what would turn
out to be their final single. And every now
and then the Modfather popped out to chat
to young Paul Hartnoll. "You should go for it,"
Weller said. "What have you got to lose?"
For Paul it was inspirational, and he went
away really fired up. Years later, he saw
Weller at a festival - though he couldn't pluck
up the nerve to talk to him. "I wanted to say to
him, 'Thanks for giving me the
encouragement,'" says Paul. "'Here I am
playing the same festival as you.' But I never
told him." Paul's mate has another part to
play in the Orbital story. He graduated from
shoplifting to breaking and entering, and at
one point the Hartnolls' house was burgled.
"I know it was him," says Paul. "We lost our
all our equipment. But when we got the
insurance money we could get much better
stuff, including our first sampler. I call him my
nemesis, but in a funny way, if he hadn't
burgled us, we would never have had a
sampler. And that was the sampler we made
'Chime' on!"