Orbital

A wise man once said: "Don't chase the buzz". Yet that is what my beloved and I did when we found ourselves buying tickets for an Orbital concert in Tripod. One of our pals was billing it as a potential recapturing of the mid-1990s vibe, so we thought that the potential for big fun was very possible.

Unfortunately, the venue did its best to recapture the more rubbish aspects of ye olde ravey experience. As you know, Tripod used to be the Red Box, a venue famous for its tendency to overfill itself for dancey events. And so it was tonight. The place was packed to the rafters, meaning that there was no room to dance, and that at every given moment there was always someone pushing past you to go somewhere else. They also seemed to be really going for it with their thing of having flunkeys mopping the floor at all times. And there was a higher percentage of cockfarmers in the crowd as well; the long queue for the cubicles in the gentlemen's toilets suggested an unwelcome change in people's drøg habits.

As to Orbital themselves… well I liked them, but I was in a rather appreciative frame of mind. They did not break astonishing new ground with their set, but they did spice up a couple of old favourites and generally make me happy to hear them all again. I particularly liked 'Satan', with its inclusion of Condoleezza Rice in its litany of servants of the Evil One. With that, and 'Halcyon', and a couple of others, it was almost possible to forget the unfortunate surroundings.

And then it was all over. We might have stayed to dance in the main auditorium, but the Tripod people were clearing it. Rather than stay in the Tripod back room, now stuffed to the gills with wankers, we made our way into the night.

Ruff Tailed Lemur

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