The rave scene that birthed English electronic duo Orbital is a relic of the past, but Paul and Phil Hartnoll are still putting a fresh spin on techno more than three decades after the release of their debut single, “Chime.” And their urgent 10th studio album, Optical Delusion, proves that they’re no legacy act simply resting on their laurels.
Orbital’s early music was largely instrumental, and when they have featured guest vocalists, it’s been unlikely suspects like scientists Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox. On Optical Delusion, the Hartnoll brothers worked with an extensive lineup of collaborators, with only two songs recorded alone. “Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song),” for example, features British ensemble Mediaeval Baebes singing the children’s song “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” which is often associated with the Bubonic plague, cleverly mixed to sound like a vocal sample.
Similarly, the operatic singing of Dina Ipavic is employed mostly as texture on “Day One.” Orbital still use voices as a sound akin to synthesizer patches, though Penelope Isles and Anna B Savage—on “Are You Alive” and “Home,” respectively—are featured more traditionally and thus leave a greater imprint on the songs themselves. Elsewhere, post-punk duo Sleaford Mods’s live bass guitar and unmistakable ranting about post-Brexit Britain’s corruption and self-sabotage make “Dirty Rat” sound more like one of their own songs than something by Orbital.
Optical Delusion, the group’s first studio album since 2018’s Monsters Exist, feels plugged into recent events. “Moon Princess” urges us to “try to make rational decisions while existing in an irrational universe,” and “The New Abnormal” and “Requiem for the Pre Apocalypse” bluntly reveal their themes with their titles alone. In dance music tradition, “Frequency” takes one vocal phrase—“You are the frequency”—and repeats it throughout. But even without topical allusions, the lyric “Help me find a home” on “Are You Alive” establishes a forlorn mood. And “Moon Princess” is filled with unhinged babbling just within the audible range, like ASMR from hell.
By this point, the Hartnolls are experts at allowing hooks to rise above their thickly layered soundscapes. “Requiem for the Pre Apocalypse,” for instance, uses slices of vocal samples as a recurring element, while the simple melody of “Day One” harkens back to predecessors like Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra, even if Orbital’s production is far denser. They’ve explored spacey atmospheres and grim, political content before, but Optical Delusion feels more like a document of the times than a sci-fi fantasy: a rave just before the end of the world.
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