Orbital - Work 1989-2002 (FFRR)

Has it really been that long? Blimey. One doesn't usually imagine "dance" acts like Orbital to be the kind of blokes to release a best-of album, but here it is. And the thing is, it could've been so great...Sorry to be picky here, but which wrong-headed A&R twit decided using the 7" versions of all Sevenoaks's finest's singles could ever be a good idea? Fair enough, so you get the full glorious comedown whack of "Belfast", and the superior US mix of "Impact", but the mighty "Halcyon" is truncated horribly and even "The Box" isn't given enough room to breathe. Since the compiler has seen fit to chop and change 7" mixes, album versions and alternate mixes in this fashion, you might think they'd have put a little proper though into it and picked, say, the peerless live-at-Millennium-Eve version of "Chime"...well mightn't you? If you've never heard a note of the Hartnoll brothers' stuff before, of course, Work 1989-2002 is an abslutely essential purchase - as long as you take special care to ignore their decidedly shonky post-1999 work in its entirety, a task made all the more tricksy by the (aaaargh!) non-chronological track order. But if you know your Orbital onions already, you've probably got all the tracks that matter already. If not, get out there and buy Brown and Snivilisation toute suite.

Orbital website

(originally published 24th June 2002)