Electro duo Orbital took their name from the M25 orbital motorway that circles London, near where raves were regularly held during the late 1980s. However, as Paul explains, his experiences of this fabled dance scene were limited.
“I never used to go to those parties, cos they were always too expensive,” he admits. “I really was on about 40 quid a week, and I couldn’t afford to go to them. We used to have lots of DIY free parties in the small market town where I lived. The police used to sit around in their panda cars outside, and just sort of monitor it and not really fuss, and make sure it finished at 3 and so on. You’d do it in the woods or in a squatted house or that sort of thing. And they were pretty much raves before anyone called them raves.
“Then once raves began, the police started busting our parties and spoiling them. They’d say ‘These are illegal drugs parties’ and we’d go, ‘Of course it’s not, we’re drinking a bit of cider for God’s sake.’ Or maybe the odd magic mushroom might appear occasionally. They were just sort of innocent parties with a few cans of beer on a Friday night. A lot of my friends went to the big M25 parties and had a great time, but it was a little bit gangster-y and expensive for me. Although they did very much capture the zeitgeist at the time, and the M25 went straight through our village.”
The DIY aesthetic of the burgeoning dance scene resulted in Orbital receiving invitations to play in many different locations, including Belfast, a city they subsequently named one of their tracks after.
“Early on, the scene was made up of enthusiastic amateurs,” reflects Paul. “Half of the people still had day jobs, and there were no agents. So we just got rung up by David Holmes, and I don’t even know how he got hold of our number, but he said, ‘Do you wanna come and do a gig in Belfast?’ This was in 1990, so initially we weren’t sure, but he said, ‘We’ll look after you, don’t worry about it.’ So we did, and it was brilliant, and that was one of the first alliances we made with someone from a different country.
“The bonds we forged then were very strong, because we were all very enthusiastic and keen. It wasn’t about the money, it was about making it happen. Another guy we built a relationship with early on was Aphex Twin, who we invited to play at a show after we heard his first record. Actually, David and Richard are two people I wouldn’t mind catching up with, cos I haven’t seen either of them for a while.”
What’s Paul’s overall highlight since he began playing in Orbital?
“I don’t know if there’s an overall one,” he ponders. “The whole thing was an amazing experience. It was creative freedom, and a chance to travel the world, but more than that, an opportunity to meet the people. When you go travelling as a tourist, you don’t really interact with others that much, but when you go working, you have to get to know them very quickly. So straight away, you get a real feel for what the backstage part of a country is like. A tourist sees the surface, but when you work, you see so much more.”