Q&A with Orbital's Phil Hartnoll

In the late 1980s Phil Hartnoll and his brother Paul began cutting and pasting music, unwittingly pouring a bit of the concrete that would ultimately make up the foundation for today's electronica. Over the past decade, the brothers Orbital have narrowly avoided definition, making music that is both a little bit of everything and all their own. On their newest album, The Altogether, Orbital forgo their usual long-windedness and opt to give it to us short and sweet, abandoning their eight-minute musical diatribes for punchy five-minute tracks.

Taking much of its inspiration from the early days of punk rock, The Altogether contains sampler cameos from the Cramps, Crass and the late, great Ian Dury. The result is an undeniably cheerful mix of technological showboating (the album was recorded in 5.1 surround sound and is also available as a full length DVD) and the DIY enthusiasm of the late 1970s. I spoke with Phil Hartnoll about tech, terrorism and punk rock before the brothers hit town to play Roseland as part of the rescheduled CMJ Music Marathon.

It seems to me that this album is a bit of a change for you in that it has this sort of upbeat, cheery kind of feel.

Yes. I would say definitely it's a bit more fun, there's not a whole lot of deep moodiness going on. We started off by saying, Let's do some shorter tracks, let's say what we need to say by the five-minute mark, which we tried to do on the last album and which didn't happen at all. And obviously music does reflect, at least our music does reflect, what's going on in our personal lives and I think we were having a bit of fun at the time.

Tell me about the DVD.

We recorded everything in a home studio. But we had a good relationship with a studio round the corner that had the capacity to do a surround sound recording. I'd just always wanted to do that. It's only since the advent of DVD that it's been accessible and commercially viable. We went in and recorded a stereo mix. The record company agreed to a DVD, but then it was like, "Oh shit! I've got to come up with some visuals now!" which I hadn't really thought about. We had a low budget and I was a bit worried that we wouldn't find directors who were into it. Luckily we know lots of likeminded people and we use a lot of video in our live performances, so we ended up talking to a lot of our friends and the response was overwhelming. I think the DVD format was very exciting to them, because it doesn't have to be MTV friendly, and they can explore different angles, it can be audio on, audio off, so they can have a bit of script in there too. There's a lot to play around with in that format. And I think it's turned into something pretty good, with a whole lot of great people involved.

You and your brother have been making music for the last decade and in that time, obviously, music has evolved, because of technological changes, cultural changes, etc. The DVD wouldn't have been possible when you began. Where do you think you fit in at this particular moment?

I never felt we've fit in anywhere, really. Sometimes we've been techno, sometimes we've been ambient, and we're not really techno at all... We get inspiration from lots of different types of music. I think as far as the style it would be quite tempting to have many different pseudonyms. From the very beginning we've just been like, "This is what we do," even if doesn't produce anything that you could call continuity. When we've done an album, it seems we've gone from one style to the next. It doesn't make a coffee-table sort of music, where you can put it on and it retains a mood. Sometimes we want to do an aggressive track, sometimes we want to do a really soft track. And so we just cross our fingers and hope the people like it despite that.

So you're reacting viscerally all the time, never swayed by fan reaction or label pressure?

Yes, exactly! It would be very easy to try to stick to one style, but it just gets too boring for me and for my brother. We're all over the place and we can't really seem to relegate ourselves to one thing.

Don't you think samplers have something to do with that? You can pick and choose any number of already existing styles and then use that as the framework for your songs.

Well, in some ways yes. You can take a chunk or a riff or something and utilize it, form the beat or groove that dictates the sort of flavor of the track. We love guitar music, thrash music. We love all sorts of music really and I suppose when we want to do an aggressive track, the guitar is such a good source, heavy metal music or something. On this latest album, we'd just be listening to something, like the Ian Dury album for instance, and something would just stick out. Something just grabs you, so you grab it.

On this album you grabbed an awful lot of early punk; there seems to be a snot-nosed kind of punk ethos running throughout it, but cheery too, as I said before. Cheerful, energetic, adolescent punk.

I was really immersed in the punk scene as a kid. I was sort of first generation and my brother was sort of second generation. I was listening to the Sex Pistols and the Clash and X-Ray Spex.

You were the perfect age.

Yeah, I was like 14 or 15. It's interesting, too, because there was a political movement attached to that music. An anti-Nazi, anti-fascist movement. But then my brother's four years younger and he ended up with more like Dead Kennedys, bands that were much more overtly political. I think the second generation of punks got it right a bit more with the lyrics. I think that that style is with us still.

Do you think it's necessary to have a political agenda if you're making art? Is that a responsibility you take on, considering that 14- and 15-year-olds are now listening to you in the same way that you were listening to the Sex Pistols?

I don't think it's a responsibility, but I do think that bits and pieces of your life come through in your music. And what we tend to do, if anything does enter, it tends to be posing questions, rather than forcing an opinion. I remember when the Gulf War happened, it did kick off a writing streak. So you can feel that in the mood of the pieces I wrote then. I think it will be quite interesting to come to America right now. Perhaps interesting is the wrong word. I know that quite a few people are canceling tours and I don't know if that's the right thing to do. I think in some ways I am a bit more used to terrorism, of course not on the scale of what happened in New York, but growing up in London with the IRA bombs and whatnot. Again, obviously not on that devastating a scale, but up there, there was basically a civil war happening.

Do you think you'll be writing and recording while you're on tour?

Yeah, definitely. The way that technology is now, we've got these laptops, so we'll be recording. It's basically a studio in your pocket. So yeah, when we're in America we'll write on the road. Inevitably, it's a really fucked-up situation, which is sad for all humanity and civilization. I don't know what's going to happen, what the vibe will be like. But I think it will be quite interesting to talk to American people and get their responses. It's terrible obviously, isn't it? I mean, Jesus Christ! I want to come over there, though, it's kind of made me more determined about coming. People can get so caught up in the worry, which is not unrealistic. But you do need a bit of release. So hopefully when people come to our gig we can provide that. Our set right now is so up and so sort of mad, that if anyone wants, you can release something. I mean, you might not be in the mood to party, but you can let go of yourself and your worries a bit.

Orbital plays Sat., Oct. 13, at Roseland, 239 W. 52nd St. (betw. 8th Ave. & B'way), 247-0200 (also see cmj.com).