When British dance act Orbital return to the fold this fall with the follow-up to 1999's Middle of Nowhere, brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll will carry their techno cross with a little help from a rather famous family member. Singer-songwriter David Gray, Phil's brother-in-law, contributed vocals to the track "Illuminate."
"We wrote that track and always felt it needed a male vocal," Phil said. "And he just popped round one day -- he used to live around the corner from us and it was like, really casual, 'Hey Dave! Have a go at this. See if you come up with anything.' And he came up with that and it's like 'Wow, that's good. That works.' Obviously, he's David Gray now, but when we did it, it was like a year and a half ago, so it was very casual good fun really."
The track will be included on Orbital's upcoming effort, The Altogether, due out September 4th on FFRR/Sire. The duo are contemplating adding limited-edition extra content, in the form of a DVD with videos, to the U.S. release, since it's street date is later than in other parts of the world.
"It was unfortunate we had to delay the album release over here, but it had to happen because companies shift around a lot," Phil said. "It had to happen so the company could set it up properly rather than rush it out. It's a bit unfortunate though 'cause our fans will want to hear it, and it will maybe force them to buy imports, which is the downside. So to make up for that I think they're going to try and to package the DVD in with the first 50,000 to 100,000 CDs."
Orbital will follow up the release with a five-week North American headlining tour, which kicks off with their Creamfields appearances in New York on September 1st.
JOLIE LASH
(June 8, 2001)