Gig review: Orbital at O2 Academy Leeds

So there’s an ecstatic (pun intended) reaction as brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll emerge silhouetted against video screens, their trademark head torches transforming them into very British low-budget sci-fi aliens. Thirty-plus years and at least two break-ups and reformations into their career, the brothers are masters of their machines and their craft, recreating and remixing their music in the moment, in perfect sync with each other and with their audience. And the visual projections and light show are as much part of the sensory overload as the mesmerising beats and bleeps.

They kick off off with Smiley, a homage to the acid house era that spawned them, sampling shock-horror news reportage. For many of the audience, the sound of a squelchy bassline and kick drum provokes a memory rush of dancefloors and festival fields past. Amid today’s culture war nonsense, it’s a timely reminder to the increasingly middle-aged rave generation that it’s not so long since they were the tabloids’ folk devils.

New album Optical Delusion shows the Hartnolls still have plenty to say - born out of the pandemic, as evoked by Ringa Ringa with the Medieval Baebes’ sampled voices adding a sinister folky undertow. An early peak sees the brand-new Dirty Rat, with guest vocalist Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods looming large on the screens, cathartically paired with their classic Satan, a sonic onslaught that summons the intensity of punk and metal - Williamson’s lyrical rage against Tory misrule echoed in the furious video imagery.

Optical Delusion supplies much of the mid-set material, including detours into futuristic pop like Are you Alive? before the beats back off for the warm ambient bath of early classic Halcyon, complete with an unlikely Spice Girls-sampling live coda. The lovely Belfast’s layered vocal loops gives way to the rave attack of their 1989 debut single Chime, followed by the industrial eco-apocalypse of Impact (The Earth Is Burning) which brings the main set to a close. As an encore, the two two-part suites Out There Somewhere and Lush are a showcase in miniature of Orbital’s cerebral melodies and physical rhythms.

Outside the venue it may be a wet Wednesday night in Leeds, but if you want to recapture a taste of that mind-remixing “I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere in a field in Hampshire” festival experience (while still remaining gainfully employed and having a chance of getting home for the babysitter) Orbital remain peerless.