8:58 - 8:58

[purlieu]

 

Ive always been interested in time, says Paul Hartnoll, until recently one half of Orbital, Britains beloved, torch-bespectacled electronic innovators and live techno pioneers who brought down the curtain on a 25 year career in 2014. Ive always had a thing for clocks, and for time as a powerful force but also the way time oppresses you. Its one of those things I keep coming back to.

 

And he went back to it again after he and Phil Hartnoll separated last year. Orbital had stopped working properly. Paul explains. Wed had a great four years since getting back together in 2008, but it was time to move on. As Paul began to explore the new freedom of working alone, he kept returning to a doodle he has drawn since he was a teenager: a clock face with the time frozen at 8:58.

 

For me, 8:58 is a moment of choice, Paul explains. Its almost 9 oclock. Are you going to school? Are you going in to this job that you hate? Everybody faces that decision now and again. 8:58 am is when youve got to make up your mind.

 

The more he thought about it, the more the idea of 8:58 began to shape his new, more personal music. Doing this music was an 8:58 moment for me too. Am I going to be truthful to myself? Do I keep battling on with Orbital or do I make a break and try something new? It was decision time.

 

The record that came out of all this is a rich and enthralling thing in which Paul expands Orbitals delirious complexity and weapons-grade dancefloor appeal into new and more sophisticated areas. Its all there in a stately and exhilarating opener, where bells, pistons and angelic robot choirs resemble a future glockenspiel. Its introduced with a spine-tingling monologue on the theme of time by Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy. The name of the track, album and artist is what else? 8:58.

 

Elsewhere there are intriguing, twilit collaborations with Northumbrian folk clan The Unthanks, sepulchral singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt, folk singer Lisa Knapp, and Robert Smith of The Cure the latter on a newly-rediscovered and superior version of Pauls 2007 single Please. There are disquieting walks in the woods, streams of consciousness from English history, ghostly refrains, and at least two straight-up dancefloor bangers in the shape of Nearly There and Cemetery featuring new artist Fable.

 

The albums a development of where I was going with Orbital, Paul says. Our last album Wonky was designed to be played live. But I wanted to do something more collaborative, more of a film soundtrack or a concept album. Hes succeeded: 8:58 is a time machine and a walk-in dream, a dance record for the mind, and a concept album that effortlessly moves the body. There are plenty of beats, he adds, But I wanted to exercise my more compositional side too, and bring in a witchy, Wicker Man aspect.

 

Key to the latter and echoing Pauls collaboration with Robert Smith is The Unthanks astonishing ensemble performance on a cover of A Forest, one of Pauls all-time favourite songs from the early days of The Cure. Hed always wanted to work with The Unthanks. When listening to their song I Wish, was struck with the idea that A Forest would suit The Unthanks unnerving pastoral-gothic voices if slowed down. Paul thought of funeral marches and Kraftwerks Looking Glass, and technos hidden pagan undertow. After all, why do both ravers and Morrismen wave sticks in the air and dance in the summertime...?

 

After building the track he traveled up to record their voices among the unique acoustics of The Unthanks folk barn near Newcastle, just before Christmas 2013. Big stone house in the middle of nowhere, pot of tea with a proper tea cosy, lovely warm welcome... it was everything I could have wished for, he remembers. They sat on the floor and sang the song for me in really low voices I was nearly in tears. And the studio was like a Victorian museum of musical curiosities with weird instruments on display and bunting everywhere. I loved every moment of it.

 

The album's out in February and available to pre-order from PledgeMusic on CD, deluxe double CD, double LP and vinyl test pressing.

[BUNKUM]

Sounds interesting, I quite liked his album from a few years ago, far better than the Long Range effort

[azatoth]

Sounds rubbish.

[nature]

I like it. Calling it rubbish is a bit harsh. Its got charm, far from garbage.

A bit antiquated? Yes. Sometimes that is exactly what I want.

[sweepstakes]

Sounds rubbish.

 

Sorry Paul.

[azatoth]

You could find better sounding stuff in EKT.

[Pirtek]

I think we've been hear before when people said Wonky was going to be shit and people ended up loving it :-P

[mcbpete]

I'm gonna pretend this is the new Orbital - https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=4070406931/size=medium/

 

In which case I'll say - Ah that sounds excellent, kinda like when they reached their golden era of the mid-late 90s but brought up to date. The production is real good and has the wonderful progression through the various sections.

 

Except it's our Wisp. so I can't.

[Pirtek]

I really think he should have carried on as Orbital and non of this 8:58 crap.

[Pirtek]

I take it all back, this is actually a really good album. Got the deluxe version yesterday (signed by Paul). The guest vocals are all good, but it's disc 2, which contains instrumental versions and a bonus track called Risky which wins it over for me. Track called "Nearly There" is fantastic!!!! Great album.

[Pirtek]

Good review here:

 

8.58 - 8.58

 

House and dance music has been bedevilled by an extraordinary amount of blandness, mediocrity and unmusicality since it reared it's otherworldly head in the machine-obsessed 80s. Only a handful of acts have stood the test of time, mainly those who could combine a purposeful musicality with a higher grasp of production, and via words and/or imagery, propel the music beyond the bland 'raise your hands in the air' or the four-to-the-floor brain sapping monotony of your average meat and two veg dance. Orbital were one of those who took dance music to a higher realm; from the groundbreaking Chime to the epic to the poignant story-based Halcyon, the Hartnoll's music has always been much more than just about losing yourself on the dancefloor, although it does rather agreeably lend itself to that kind of behaviour, as the best rock'n'roll always does.

 

Hartnoll has claimed to be always interested in the concept and ideas of 'time', and his new solo project (essentially Orbital but without his brother Phil) is based on a doodle he first drew as a teenager, a clock face with the time frozen at 8:58. "8:58 am is that moment when you've got to make up your mind," he says about the day ahead. For Paul, it was decision time, to forge ahead with Orbital, or to strike out on his own, a decision that was only formally announced last autumn.

 

'How we live by time, how we live by the watch, the clock, brought up to respect the clock', intones the menacing voice of Irish actor Cillian Murphy (Inception, Peaky Blinders et al) before stabbing and symphonic synths and sound effects gradually build into an euphoric soundscape on the opening track, which also, rather confusingly, carries the name 8.58. It's classic Orbital, progressive EDM that is multifaceted, never predictable, clear as a bell, strong, rich and dynamic, and with several discernible melodies within.

 

An album highlight, Please, is a re-tread of the 2007 original, released on Hartnoll's one and only previous solo album, and is a more straightforward, albeit still out-there, banging house stomper, Lianne Hall's mangled voice and the four-to-the-floor beats a prelude to some more synth strings, before Robert Smith's distinctive and deceptively languid vocal adds a certain playfulness to the proceedings, with Lianne's yearning voice providing the neat female counterpoint. Although it is a bit cheeky to haul back an old song, it's a great tune, Hartnoll has given it a new mix, and the original was somewhat lost when originally released, the old school house flavours remaining timeless.

 

The Past Now is also a composite piece, beginning with the ethereal vocals of folk singer Lisa Knapp, complimenting the haunting ambient atmospherics, before a complex and inviting melody welds gothic 80s synth-dance with dark motorik rhythms, that are both propulsive and dreamy. Meanwhile singer songwriter Ed Harcourt delivers a powerful and passionate vocal performance on Villain, again a song that vaguely recalls the 80s thanks to the one note synth melodies and textures, and drum pad rhythms, within the generally foreboding atmosphere.

 

Cilian Murphy returns for The Clock, a reprise of lead track 8.58, but this time accompanied by some acid-inflected industrial hard house beats and bleeps, to be interrupted by the sound of a digital alarm going off as Murphy says: 'brace yourself for freedom.. now.', a call to let go as it were, in mind and in body, the deep and squelchy bass groove inviting you to resist if you can...

 

The Cure's A Forest then appears as a bit of a surprise, because we already know this song well, a tune that was in Hartnoll's head (and is part of his formative years) when he came up with the idea of approaching Northumbria's songbirds The Unthanks to lend their breathy and beguiling voices, which they obliged at their studio in their home. Building and building, The Unthanks repeating the songs 'again and again and again' refrain, as big Leftfield-type drums close it out.

 

Instrumental numbers Broken Up is a more ambient number, sparse old school hip hop drum machine beats underpinning the multilayered synths, swelling textures and techno bleeps, while Nearly There, appropriately enough the penultimate track, is propulsive, fast, and also technoesque, with echoes of Underworld's Cowgirl a signpost, as Hartnoll re-lives those early days of searching for the next rave; a soundtrack to nowhere, and yet everywhere, fast and furious.

 

Final track Cemetery features Fable, a relatively unknown singer, but with a bright future ahead, her powerful and soulful voice sounding well beyond her young years, lending this euphoric and melodic banger the required bite as the grooves ebb and flow in best dance floor action

 

Rewarding several listens, there is, as always with Hartnoll, loads going on, the very thoughtful melodies, textures, sounds and effects constructed with mechanical precision, but with a fluidity that transforms the outwardly digitalised soundscape into an organic and warm record. It's a difficult trick to pull off, but Hartnoll's liberal use of vocals, electronicalised real instrumentation, and field sound recordings have helped to transform 8.58 into something magical, and yet human, with the underlying theme a wake up call to shrug off a possible dystopian future.

Jeff Hemmings

[purlieu]

Yeah, the main disc is fine, although I agree it benefits from the instrumental disc afterwards (which is a nice way of him acknowledging that a lot of fans would probably want something Orbital-ish, whilst still being able to put out his own vision on the main album). The second disc really just sounds like another Orbital album, which is fine and - given that Phil only got two co-writing credits on Wonky - totally unsurprising. Good stuff.

[Pirtek]

That's more or less what I think about the album. As for Orbital, I think Paul has always been the main one. On previous albums they just shared the credit, but when getting back together to go Wonky, Paul felt differently. Getting back to 8:58, disc one is growing on me more with each listen. I'm enjoying more than The Ideal Condition.

[Soloman Tump]

I saw him DJ in London last Friday and he played a bunch of these tunes as well as a few orbital remixes. Was pretty good.

It was in a basement bar where you could also do 10 pin bowling. I was pretty drunk! Had a good boogie to his stuff though.

[Pirtek]

Really got used to the vocal versions now! Really enjoying this album :-D

[Pirtek]

Loving this album sooo much! I thought it would be good, just wasn't expecting to like as much as I do! Check out "Nearly There" on Radio 6, absolutely amazing!!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05p2b53