William Orbit Albums (8)
'My Oracle Lives Uptown'
Release Date 6/8/2009
Tracks 16
Label Kobalt
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What The Critics Say
Producer, performer, and composer William Orbit returns to recording his own projects after a six-year hiatus. Pieces in a Modern Style, his reading of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, was a popular and chillout-room smash in 2000. Orbit pioneered a style of recording and producing that blended progressive house with ambient and ethereal atmospherics. That style is signature and has graced everything he's touched -- check Madonna's Ray of Light album or his own Strange Cargo 2 for a taste. So let's get something straight from the jump: there is nothing new here at all. In addition, the scene that would have embraced this recording as a bible for ambient house six to ten years ago has gone the way of all quaint trends that people are all but ashamed to admit they were a part of. That said, the music taken on its own merit nets this: Hello Waveforms is a wonderful listening experience. As is to be expected, dreamy guitars lilt and sway as synths and steady hypnotic beats create a shimmering soundscape that brings space and time to a virtual stop. Orbit appropriated Madame Butterfly for the gorgeous "Humming Chorus." Classical motifs and ambient music gather together and weave a nocturnal sonic sea, as gentle keyboard waves swell and lilt. Orbit collaborates with the Sugababes -- with Kenna singing lead vocals -- on the sensual single "Spiral." Laurie Mayer from the Strange Cargo period is here vocally on "Who Owns the Octopus," which also stars Finley Quaye on acoustic guitar. She also contributes her gorgeous voice to "Bubble Universe." "Surfin" actually employs piano counterpoint with synthesizers, and it's seamless and slightly spooky. "Fragmosia" stars Caroline LaVelle and Jocelyn Pook on strings, hovering above the drum and synth programming and creating a tension to be sure, but it's a deeply romantic one. "Firebrand" actually hosts winds and brass instruments as well as a vibraphone. It seemingly takes forever to get going (the track is over six minutes long), but there is no hurry. Tiny melodies and modes float by on the way to the rhythm tracks; when they finally arrive, one is brought to a kind of ecstatic tranquility -- especially on headphones. The bottom line on Hello Waveforms is that it may seem dated to terminal hipsters, but for everyone else it is small yet exceptionally well crafted. Its beauty and aesthetic pleasure come from a seduction of the senses. It is utterly drenched with those elements that appeal to pleasures known and unknown. So, while Orbit's style may be familiar, the substance is what matters. Orbit follows his own muse and Hello Waveforms is a sensory expression of that encounter. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Pieces in a Modern Style'
Release Date 2/22/2000
Tracks 13
Label Maverick
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What The Critics Say
After years of making his own esoteric ambient albums and paying for them by doing dance remixes for pop acts, William Orbit hit the big time in 1998 by co-writing and producing Madonna's Ray of Light album. With his own debut solo album on Madonna's label, he returned to his esoteric pursuits, programming a variety of calm classical pieces into his computer and rearranging them to one extent or another. Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" came off relatively unscathed, but by the time he got to "Ogives Number 1" by Erik Satie, Orbit was mixing in the sounds of a helicopter, as if he were Francis Ford Coppola doing sound design work on Apocalypse Now with the Doors' "The End." Handel's "Largo from Xerxes" remained recognizable, but Beethoven's "Triple Concerto" was largely transformed. No matter whose music he was reformulating, however, Orbit worked gently, creating an album that, if it technically belonged beside Wendy Carlos' Switched-On Bach, actually was more reminiscent of Brian Eno's Discreet Music. It may seem surprising, then, to note that "Adagio for Strings" landed on the U.S. and U.K. dance charts, but that was only in Ferry Corsten's remix (actually, an entirely different version, full of the usual thundering percussion), which was included along with an ATB version on a separate CD with the album. Though Orbit was already at work on the new Madonna album at the time that Pieces in a Modern Style was released, from the sound of it you'd have thought he was really angling to get film scoring jobs. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Strange Cargo Hinterland'
Release Date 2/20/1995
Tracks 12
Label Warner
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What The Critics Say
The last and best of the Strange Cargo albums, III matches elegant sequencer trance and understated organic instruments (piano, guitar) with ethnic-fusion and soft house rhythms. It's the only Strange Cargo record featuring vocals, with Beth Orton making an early appearance (more earth mother than neo-folky) on the beautiful ambient-trance single "Water From a Vine Leaf." "Into the Paradise" and "The Story of Light" are variations on the same form, while Orbit borrows from hip-hop and dub for "Time to Get Wize," with the toasting of Divine Bashim. While still tied to the '80s Fourth World aesthetic of its predecessors, on Strange Cargo III Orbit begins moving toward a more completely electronic form of music in keeping with the productions of his Guerilla label. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Recorded between 1984 and 1987, Orbit's first Strange Cargo release is a dynamic album of quirky mood music, with the producer exploiting the full range of his synthesizer presets and evoking a quintessentially '80s style of Fourth World digitalia. Though they're all well produced, most of these tracks are suited more for use as musical beds on the Discovery Channel, and "Via Caliente" and "Riding to Rio" may be too bright and happy for fans of his later work. Still, "Silent Signals," "The Secret Garden," and "Scorpions" are contemplative ambience in league with early Tangerine Dream. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Strange Cargo 2 finds Orbit moving (slowly) away from the synth-horn solos and overall sound of new age/contemporary instrumental. Though there's a bit more electronics on this record, he still seems uncommonly fixated with textural touches like Spanish guitar, and the effect is much more Windham Hill than Warp. Still, the Indian fusion pieces "777" and "The Thief & the Spirit" are highlights, with a series of masked vocal samples creating eerie moods. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
