Orbital Live at Oscillate, Birmingham, Sat June 5th, 1993.

Well, Higher Intelligence Agency pulled of a classic one. They went to
the MegaDog with Orbital and booked them for June 5th in Brum. The day
approached...

That evening we arrived at the much-fly-postered-Oscillate-extravaganza 
at the Dance Factory in Birmingham, searched on entry and got into
this well dingy place. Loads of wall hangings from Oscillate and
parachutes. Met the lighting crew who were friends from the 3rd Eye
Soundsystem who got this event by a chance phone-call. They were well
chuffed.

About an hour plus of 'Ambient Grooves' e.g. stuff off the Ambient Dub
albums and a little Aphex thrown in. The audience were being really
crap until about 10min before HIA came on when people grudgingly
committed themselves to the evening. (Dontcha just hate that? If you
go to an event to dance, do it EARLY. Commit and encourage.)

Then HIA come on. Excellent set with two new tracks and three off
their albums. The new tracks were very techno-electro-blips and hard
breaks. A change from "Message from a Higher Intelligence" (but only
cos I've heard it so much) or "Speed-Learn". A little keyboard
trouble, but I only noticed that because I've had the same problems.
Led to a cut down mix of something fairly acidic done live. They coped
well, no-one really noticed.

The DJing took up the tempo after that and the crowd danced on.
Orbital came on at about 12:30am, just as everyone was getting ready
to sit down, so we all danced through. This, as it turned out, was a
bad move. Everyone I know died on their feet before the end. Anyway.

Orbital started with "Planet of the Shapes", went into "Lush 3-1" and
"Lush 3-2" and "Impact (The earth is burning)" as per the album.
By that time the audience was KNACKERED. Then they pulled a master
stroke - the played "Chime Remix" raw and live. The party took off!

The whole sound was raw and upfront, making full use of the 909 breaks
they had (big thing, size of a suitcase!). The 303 was sadly underused
in my opinion, but that's only because I'm an '88 Acid House nut.
Amazing noises like you've never dreamed of, and some surprising uses
of sounds you'd think wouldn't work together. As it was raw and live,
the levels aren't as subtle as on a fully produced album, so you get
to pick out the different parts and it's an eye-opening experience just
what they get away with!

At that point, someone either kicked over the cables or a circuit
fused, bacause it all died. Bugger! The Oscillate DJ's kept us
simmering until Orbital could kickstart their system again (and that's
no mean feat as theit set is fully intermixed). They came back with 
"Halcyon" I think (by this time I was too knackered to care really.
The music just kept on coming) and went through some unidentifiable
track which may be new, but may just be something off the first album
radically remixed. Towards the end, which ended with "The Naked and
the Dead" (with lots of fiddling with the parametric mixer) old P&P
were up on stage really grooving away, smoking cigs almost the whole
time. The audience had witnessed an excellent live techno set (streets
ahead of HIA and totally unlike anyone else) and it just felt special.

After 1.5 hours of Orbital (not including the 0.5hour break for
rebooting their system) the 5 pounds entrance fee seemed amazing value
for money. I'd recomment it to anyone - go see Orbital live if you
can and you WILL NOT be disappointed.

- Robin.

[Written by Robin J Green. [R.J.Green-SE1@cs.bham.ac.uk] Spelling [ha!] corrected and article generally made nicer by Chris McGrail ["hey, I
was there too..." mcgraicp@uk.ac.aston.cs] Input Out.]