The concert was sold out 12 days before the actual performance. Bass‑O‑Matic being in the charts, working with Ralf Hutter didn't mean as much to me as this. Recently he debuted Pieces In A Modern Style at the South Bank, London. Orbit admits to being fed up with records and remixes. People mentioned Deep Purple's 'Concerto For Group & Orchestra', so I had to be careful." In Concert? I was warned I was treading on heavily polluted ground. You know, there's a terrible precedent for this kind of music. Every single piece of notation was redone Damian just entered all the notes in the computer. The Barber piece is very untinkered with, apart from a little bit of textural change - an octave down with the low cellos, stuff like that. Some things are more tinkered with than others. "A guy called Damian le Gassick helped me with all the notation. Pieces In A Modern Style is incredibly faithful to the original music yet the textures are electronically generated with hints of house music, Tangerine Dream and Pete Namlook popping up along the way. I thought I'd get howls of protest for re‑contextualising a national institution, but that simply wasn't the case. "Every time I played it, I got phone call after phone call. ![]() In the context of the experimental dance music he was playing on the radio, Orbit thought he'd cause an outrage. One track he loved to play was Samuel Barber's 'Adagio', which has nearly been turned into a cliche by association with Oliver Stone's film Platoon. Two years ago Orbit used to spend some of his limited spare time playing records on the West Coast KCRW radio station. I came back to England a little bit down and Rob Dickens sent me a tape of 'Cantus', by Arvo Part, and some of Gorecki's music. ![]() I was half‑way through recording it, in a little beach house in LA, when I realised it was too schlocky. I thought I'd dig up more stuff for my next album - by Nino Rota, Bernard Herrmann, Lalo Shifrin, Henry Mancini - and call it 'Elevator Music'. I played around with it for three days and stuck it on the album. You see on Strange Cargo 3 (Virgin) I did a version of 'Harry Flowers' (from the Mick Jagger film Performance) which is spoof muzak. "Yes, he's helping me with N‑Gram recordings. Orbit admits to having been introduced to the new simplicity of Arvo Part by the chairman of Warner Brothers, Rob Dickens. I believe the only way to sustain depth is to use profound melodies." I can only go so far with MIDI soundscapes and the thing about music designed for instant impact is that it isn't necessarily sustained after several listenings. If you think about not being constrained by a vocal or the need to have a song or a lyric, it makes sense. With his track record in electronic‑based music, my first enquiry related to why Orbit had taken an interest in classical acoustic music at all? With the album still to come out, an exhausted William Orbit spoke to me in his North London home before taking a well‑earned break in California. Even a special Royal Festival Hall concert had to be rearranged at the eleventh hour due to legal problems. Just before it was due to come out, the publishers of Arvo Part and Henryk Gorecki blocked its release. The album The Electric Chamber: Pieces In A Modern Style (N‑Gram) is a tour‑de‑force a virtual blend of electronica with the compositional force inherent in those great 20th Century composers. Earlier this year he conceived an album of reconstructions of various pieces by Satie, Ravel, Part, Gorecki and Barber. Having embraced the dance scene with two amusing Bass‑O‑Matic albums and been the remixer of choice for the likes of Prince, Peter Gabriel, Madonna and the ever reclusive Kraftwerk, Orbit's newfound fascination is with the classics. Everybody knows he's got an incredible talent with low frequencies and timbre. His wonderful Strange Cargo series of instrumental albums, which began in 1987, is now on its fourth instalment: Hinterland. But there was little interest in electronic music back then, in the year that U2 struck gold with 'Unforgettable Fire'.Įver since, I've kept a dutiful eye on Orbit's progress. The rhythmic flair and mix of acoustic and electric sounds on 'Wish Thing' (Torch Song's debut) was enough for me to approach the NME with a story. I had just moved to London from Ireland and a friend had advised me that Orbit had a way with sound which was unique. Orbit had made some money working on oil rigs and had jumped into the music business with gusto. My very first formal encounter with musicians in England occurred way back in 1984, when I met Will Orbit and his group Torch Song in a plush studio in Little Venice, London. ![]() MARK PRENDERGAST catches up with ace remixer/musician William Orbit to learn of his newfound passion for classical music.
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