Admittedly it had already been used on the first album, but still, it was pleasing to me, lover of Star Trek: The Next Generation, hearing Worf say, "There is the theory of the Moebius…a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop…where time becomes a loop…wwhheerree ttiimmee bbeeccommeess aa lloooopp…"
And then after that, some vinyl scratchiness, some sort of heavy beat loop, a bit of techno noise, that one sample from Withnail and I which Ride used about the stopped clocks, some bass tones come to the fore, and without knowing it, we are off and we're not going to come back. The Hartnolls' presumably knew exactly what they were doing all along, I guess. I sure didn't know, at least in the sense that when I first played this I knew I liked them, but I didn't realize how much I was going to love them.
Orbital 2 is hardly the only techno album that matters, of course, but more than most albums, it captures all that there is to love about a certain something in terms of sheer sound. The mechanistic thump and pulse, the keyboard sheen, the hip-hop beats, the stutters, reverses, steps-back and momentous shifts announced not at all, but simply appearing as if bidden to rise from the ground or out of the air. Magic, that insufficiently distinguishable branch of technology, at work again, as it should be.
So, freed from the burden of history and fat guys in beards tuning up Gretsches and wailing bad attempts at blues, this album, in particular. Mind you, you could also have a bunch of thin bastards in goofy hats standing around staring at the turntables instead, but what would be the point? You're here to dance, aren't you? So stop your trainspotting and go. Let that perfect start to "Lush 3-1," needly stabs looped with a bit of swoon in the background for color, and then the beat begins and you end, because the song is all and you are not.
And "Impact" has bits about cries for survival, and "Walk Now…" may start with a didg and we've all been there, but then these marvelous chirpy songs come along and do all these great, strange things for us, the Humble Listeners, and things go as they do, and by the time we hit "Halcyon + On + On," it makes perfect sense why this might have really been the source of blissout. Opus III, whoever and whatever you are, thanks for creating that song so the vocal samples here that sends everything forward and outward and upward might exist. It's a very good thing.