Orbital (1993 album)

Orbital is the second album from British electronica duo Orbital. In the United States the album had the title Orbital 2 on the spine of the album: in the rest of the world outside the US the album was released without a title, and it is commonly known as The Brown Album to differentiate it from Orbital's similarly untitled 1991 debut album, which had a green cover. It was released in May 1993 and reached the #28 on the UK album charts.

The album

On Orbital the duo aimed to make more atmospheric music than the dance raves of their first album. They used more complex rhythms and denser arrangements on the appropriately monickered pieces entitled "Lush" but still proving themselves capable of making quality pop music on "Halcyon + On + On", with vocals from Kirsty Hawkshaw of Opus III.

The album begins with "Time Becomes", which features the same speech sample (by actor Michael Dorn in Star Trek: The Next Generation - Time squared - Season 2 Ep. 13, Worf - 20’30 : « There is the theory of Möbius. A twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop ») which opened their first album. The piece uses phasing, a technique popularized by Steve Reich, in which two identical samples are repeated at slightly different speeds.