Orbital team up with sleaford mods on new song ‘Dirty Rat’.
The seminal electronic duo emerged from the rave era, blending club tropes with different types of compositional ideas. The Hartnoll brothers reformed to huge acclaim, and their last studio album ‘Monsters Exist’ landed back in 2018.
New album ‘Optical Delusion’ will be released on February 17th, matching their cutting edge production to a number of guests. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’ is a case in point – beginning as a remix swap, it’s a full-blown collaboration with sleaford mods.
Jason Williamson’s barbed lyrics perfectly augment Orbital’s concrete-heavy digitalism, with the frontman lambasting the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital / blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel / blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”
“This track is a giant capital letter,” explains Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll. “Like in the Book of Kells, where the very first letter always gets the big treatment from the monk when he’s doing his illustrated borders. It’s got that old school dance music vibe with bits of Cabaret Voltaire in there, even bits of The Shamen. It’s a little bit punk rock, nice and loud. A really refreshing, ‘wake up’ kind of track. And Jason is just brilliant!”
“I guess it’s about telling people to take responsibility for their own actions,” adds Phil Hartnoll. “You know, all these politicians don’t come from out of nowhere. Somebody keeps voting them in. So who might that be…?”
A track that sounds more and more timely by the minute, ‘Dirty Rat’ attempts to engage with some of the darker aspects of the British psyche. Jason Williamson adds: “The ongoing culture of non-thought mostly exists because of a lack of education into critical thought. How do you mobilise a people firmly imprisoned by a concrete system?”
Tune in now.
‘Optical Delusion’ tracklist:
1 Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song) (feat. The Mediaeval Baebes)
2 Day One (feat. Dina Ipavic)
3 Are You Alive? (feat. Penelope Isles)
4 You Are The Frequency (feat. The Little Pest)
5 The New Abnormal
6 Home (feat. Anna B Savage)
7 Dirty Rat – With Sleaford Mods
8 Requiem For The Pre Apocalypse
9 What A Surprise (feat. The Little Pest)
10 Moon Princess (feat. Coppe)
Photo Credit: Kenny McCracken
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