The electronic pulse of the British duo Orbital, made up of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, shakes up the first day of concerts at Phe Festival 2023 in their first live performance in the Canary Islands with their recent studio album Optical Delusion

The eighth edition of Phe Festival 2023 embraces electronic culture and dance music with the presence of the British duo Orbital, in their first live performance on a stage in the Canary Islands in their more than 30 years of activity. The electronic pulse of the brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, snipers of rave culture and dance floors, one of the outstanding references of the British scene of the 90s, which takes its name from the London ring road, the M25, where raves and the electronic madness brought by acid house flourished, it is, for obvious reasons, one of the highlights of the programming of the music and trends festival hosted by the town of Puerto de la Cruz. 

Leading group, innovator and pioneer of dance music since the early 90s of the last century, Orbital reaches Phe Festival 2023 in top form and with a fresh repertoire, that of his recent studio album Optical Delusion, which was published last February. It is also the second date this year in Spain after passing through the FIB in Benicassim last July. With Orbital, the Phe Festival 2023 will close the first day of live music at the dock esplanade in Puerto de la Cruz. The British will take to the main stage around 12:50 am, according to the concert schedule for Friday, August 18.

Paired in the Olympus of electronic dance with rhythm alchemists of the caliber of The Shamen, Letfield, Underworld, Prodigy, Faithless or Chemical Brothers, Orbital has withstood the passage of time with better muscle, with an excellence reserved for a few artists in a scene such as electronic dance music in all its variants and known subgenres. His speech, with the vocation of playing music live from his first shows, with noticeable influences from punk rock and early electronics, has gone through techno, acid house, breakbeat and EDM -Electronic Dance Music-, and a endless labels.

Active between 1989 and 2004, Orbital has always had one foot in the present to draw the music of a future that was yesterday. Like everything else, the band has had intermittent moments, and it was in 2009 when the Hartnolls put their classic lighted glasses back on and since then they have maintained a regular schedule between recordings, productions and tours. Like the bands and artists who made their way into electronic music in the transition between the 1980s and 1990s, Orbital built bridges with techno to blur the boundaries with other styles, and contributed to popularizing electronic music through live performances and attachment to club culture.  

With more than 15 albums published since his celebrated debut Orbital (1991), the also called Green Album, that next to orbital 2 (1993), the Brown Album, are leading titles in electronica and rave culture; and references that cannot be ignored to put the British duo in perspective, such as In Sides (1996), snivilisation (1994), The Middle of Nowhere (1999), together (2001), Wonky (2012) or monsters exist (2018), which came after six years of silence in the studio and which until last February was the last published before the launch of  Optical Delusion (2023). Soundtracks for film and television and some four dozen singles, including several classic songs that have had a great impact on club, pop and underground music, complete a long career that places them above other artists of their generation. 

from past to present

Optical Delusion (2023) brings back to the present some veterans who refuse to fall into nostalgia. This tenth reference in his discography is an album generous in collaborations with artists who have little in common with the electronic seams of Orbital, in the case of Coppe, Dina Ipavic, Penelope Isles, The Little Pest, The Mediaeval Baebes, Anna B Savage and Sleaford Mods . 

Topics like Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song), with The Mediaeval Baebes, which opens the disc, is a declaration of intent of what the disc contains as a whole. Day One, techno structure with Dina Ipavic; others like Are You Alive? with Penelope Islas, with a pop structure in the vein of Kraftwerk; the nod to breakbeat and drum'n'bass in Requiem for the Pre-Apocalypse; or the final coda Moon Princess, with the Japanese Coppe. To highlight above all, the outstanding dirty rat, with Sleaford Mods, the first single from the album, another blowout tracks from the Orbital factory, which is added to a repertoire with which the English duo move their audience to the dance floor as if there were no tomorrow. 

Recognized by Kraftwerk as outstanding students - the German group invited Orbital to do one of the six remixes of Expo Remix (2000)-, pieces that are the history of electronic music sprout from Orbital's suitcase, as is the case with chime, Satan, Belfast, Impact, Halcyon, Are We Here?, Remember, where is it going? (with Stephen Hawking), among dozens, in addition to that nod to the pioneers of electronic music with the version of the soundtrack of the series doctor who (1963), composed by Ron Grainer and performed by Delia Derbyshire for the BBC.