Why can't anybody hear me?

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

11/04/99 : The Middle Of Nowhere - Orbital

This is one of two dance (well, dance-ish, at least) albums I bought together around this time (taking us up to 17/38) and, whilst I haven't revisited either of them in a long time, I have a soft spot in my heart for both of them.  So I'm very much looking forward to revisiting this one now and the other one in a few days...

Yeah, this is good.  The thing I like about most of Orbital's stuff is that they are serious about the music but also serious about the fun - they'll lay down a decent tune as the basis for a track and then just add just enough slightly quirky bits around the edges to keep you interested (eg "Spare Parts Express" riffing on the John Craven's Newsround theme tune).  I think "Otoño" and "Nothing Left 1/2" are my favourite tracks (although I'm not entirely sure why the latter is in two parts), but I like them all and think the album flows well.  I appreciate it's not for everyone, but if you like that kinda sound (Wikipedia calls it "ambient techno" which seems reasonable to me - I think Orbital and Sasha & Digweed are probably my favourite providers thereof) this is a good example.

We're at #3 with a new entry in the chart this week, on their start of a five week run - it deserved more than that, people!  The rest of the top five were ABBA, The Corrs, The Corrs again and Stereophonics and the next highest new entry was The New Radicals (#11).  Also, pleasingly, Blur's 13 was at #13.

Wikipedia has very little on the album other than listing the samples including telling us that "Style" features Dollar's "Oh L'Amour" - you certainly can't accuse them of being musical snobs.  I also learned that Alison Goldfrapp provides the "lyrics" on "Nothing Left 1/2".  The critics were pretty much in agreement that the album doesn't really show any progression, but they don't really care because they like what Orbital does anyway.  It didn't do anything anywhere else though - and only sold 60,000 copies here!

"Customers also listened to" The Future Sound Of London, The Orb, Underworld and Hybrid - all fine providers of bleepage!  But, as I said, Orbital are in my opinion one of the finest providers of bleepage and I really enjoyed revisiting this album.

18/04/99 - Better than I was expecting
04/04/99 - Surprisingly tolerable

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