Orbital announce UK tour for March/April 2023

Dec 16

Dec 16 Orbital announce UK tour for March/April 2023

With “Optical Delusion”, their tenth studio album, Orbital dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and beguiling images from recent times, when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnoll brothers watched on TV as kids finally came true. The album’s lead single, the BBC6 Music playlisted lead single Dirty Rat, is an incendiary collaboration with Sleaford Mods whose brilliant video has swiftly racked up half a million views.

This week, the band released a second track from “Optical Delusion”, Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song), in which a classic, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing Ring O’Roses, the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

The new album is the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for Orbital, who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House. Earlier this year an Orbital thirtieth anniversary package 30 Something – featuring reinterpretations of Chime, Satan, Belfast and more by fans ranging from Jon Hopkins to ANNA to David Holmes, plus studio versions of Orbital live favourites – reintroduced Paul and Phil Hartnoll to a worldwide fanbase.

Orbital “Optical Delusion” - Track List

01 Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song) (feat. The Mediaeval Baebes)

02 Day One (feat. Dina Ipavic)

03 Are You Alive? (feat. Penelope Isles)

04 You Are The Frequency (feat. The Little Pest)

05 The New Abnormal

06 Home (feat. Anna B Savage)

07 Dirty Rat – With Sleaford Mods

08 Requiem For The Pre Apocalypse

09 What A Surprise (feat. The Little Pest)

10 Moon Princess (feat. Coppe)

You can pre-order the album here