“The funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something that you haven’t…” So begins the intro to Orbital’s “Satan”, sampled from the Butthole Surfers’ mighty “Sweatloaf”, delivered roughly an hour and a half into the Hartnoll brothers’ last ever Brixton show.
Two days later they bid adieu to their other spiritual home of Glastonbury and on July 28 they will perform together for the last time to an audience of Peel Session competition winners in Maida Vale. For other bands this might be a time for maudlin contemplation (Suede’s pre-Christmas swansongs come to mind), but for Orbital devotees it’s the same excuse for a celebration their live shows have always been.
On one of the summer’s cooler evenings thus far Brixton Academy is a humid hellhole, rendered bearable only by the aural ecstasy on offer. Standing stage front, Paul and Phil and their torch-adorned eyewear command a reception as fervent as comeback kings (and queen) the Pixies earlier in the month. Never crossover cover-stars like The Chemical Brothers or tabloid fodder like Fatboy Slim, Orbital have instead quietly and definitively rewritten dance music to the point where they are no less than a British institution – the Morrisseys of clued-up clubbing, perhaps.
Behind them, a hypnotic backdrop of enormous rotating blister packs acts both as a screen for their projections (road signs, peace doves, typical ’90s fare) and a knowing symbol of their hedonistic heritage. Aging beardos inexplicably not at Glastonbury bounce around on the sidelines while grown-up ravers now throng the bars rather than hog the toilet cubicles.
Orbital appear to have changed too; no longer a continuous live mix, the set stops for pregnant pauses between tracks, giving a more rock’n’roll, Greatest Hits feel to proceedings. So there’s “Satan” – the song that essentially invented The Chemical Brothers, “Belfast” and its Enigma-tic operatic sample and the eternally listenable anthem “Chime”, all unwithered by age, familiarity or a decade of bad imitations.
With every breakdown hollered and hooted and even the security staff abandoning their positions to throw some low-key shapes, it’s a fabulously fitting send-off. Upstaged by their own scenery they may have been, but with their footnote in history assured the Hartnolls can truly have few other regrets.
