Orbital’s performance at the Glastonbury Festival on Saturday 25th June 1994 is commonly regarded as legendary because of the context in which it happened as well as its quality.
In May 1992, a week-long free rave took place on Castlemorton Common in Worcestershire. In his speech at the Conservative Party Conference four months later, the Prime Minister, John Major, spoke of so-called “New Age Travellers…people who say they commune with nature but have no respect for it when it belongs to others.” As has already been noted, the Castlemorton rave took place on common land, but this detail was irrelevant to people who see land as property. Free parties were considered a threat to the status quo because they demonstrated the possibility of living outside, as Ed Gillett writes in his superb book Party Lines, ‘a world where cultural value and economic productivity are deemed to be inseparable.’
In the end, Major got his way by overseeing the passing of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which, according to Jim Carey (no, not that one), is ‘the most draconian law yet levelled against alternative British culture.’ It famously criminalised music that consisted of a ‘succession of repetitive beats.’ Less famously, it also created the offence of ‘aggravated trespass,’ which was trespass ‘in relation to any lawful activity’ such as elite pastimes like fox hunting. The legislation built upon the Public Order Act 1986, which was introduced the year after ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’ – the police attack on a convoy of 140 vehicles on its way to the summer solstice festival in Stonehenge. The Public Order Act 1986 prohibited ‘trespassory assemblies’ that may result in ‘serious disruption to the life of a community’. The intention of the legislation was, of course, to seriously disrupt the life of a community. This was grotesque hypocrisy and possibly also evidence that Thatcher had a sense of humour. The legislation worked. However, as Gillett writes, within a few years dance music began to ‘reoccupy many of the same spaces in British social and political life, reinvigorating the new Traveller scene and creating…new opportunities to reoccupy the commons in pursuit of collective pleasure.’
So, let’s listen to the Orbital record, shall we?
After a very polite introduction (“Hello! Thank you for coming. Hope you enjoy it…”), ‘Forever’ emerges like an alien spaceship blocking the sun. Agitated dialogue from the 1982 film Britannia Hospital is played over ominous chords, and around the five-minute mark things become a bit Tubular Bells. The remainder of the track is like a dancier version of a retrospective Boards of Canada soundtrack for a 1970s government-approved film about the benefits of public parks, though with another panicked observation from a fictional doctor: “…while millions continue to suffer…and go hungry…condemned forever!” One can only imagine what those unfamiliar with Orbital made of it all at the time. After such a subdued beginning, you might assume that the Hartnoll brothers would bring out the big beats for fear of losing the crowd. But no. ‘Sad But True’ takes its sweet time, with Alison Goldfrapp’s vocals appearing shortly after the introduction of a chord progression that may have inspired Rob Dougan’s ‘Clubbed to Death’ (otherwise known as ‘that one from The Matrix’). The beats do come out on next track ‘Impact (The Earth Is Burning)’, and the chords at 37 seconds are the equivalent of a “now the party has really started” announcement. The track is the sort of thing that would have kept Major and Thatcher up at night (if only). About halfway in, it’s peppered with quivering laser sounds, and the chords and repetitive beats work in thrilling harmony to send the crowd into ecstasy. Synchronised clapping starts without any instruction –an example of spontaneous mass order that would have made a Nuremberg rally organiser weep with jealousy. The track sees its way out with galloping drums that may have inspired William Orbit’s work on Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’.
A minute of sparkling, arpeggiated respite is provided by the beginning of ‘Remind’, then the kick drum appears, the likes of which Glastonbury has only experienced since during an Underworld set. The next five minutes are a heavenly blizzard of electronic sounds, and if you shut your eyes, you can imagine the people of Pilton writing letters of complaint at the exact same time that the Chemical Brothers were taking notes. ‘Walk Now’ starts with what sounds like a vastly amplified recording of Satan’s fridge, then jolly beats kick in, and all is well. There then follows a ‘woodpecker interlude’ before six minutes of arms-in-the-air-like-you’re-just-not-aware raving to further enrage locals trying to sleep. ‘Are We Here?’, which is a mere 15 minutes and 43 seconds long, was released as a single three months after the Glastonbury performance. Alison Goldfrapp provides vocals again, and the track samples The Specials’ ‘Man at C&A’. The single version of ‘Are We Here?’ includes four minutes of silence, which are, in the Hartnoll brothers’ own words, “a direct challenge to the UK’s 1994 legislation closing down unlicensed raves.” Thankfully, the Glastonbury version of the track does not include four minutes of silence, as that would have been tremendously awkward. As the track twinkles to a close, there are more snippets of dialogue, including a rant about a “workshy dirty layabout.” Was this meant as a reference to John Major’s mention in his 1992 conference speech of people “sponging off others”? The track, which speculates on the uniqueness of humanity, ends with the repeated question, “What does God say?”
Penultimate track ‘Attached’ (the last track on Orbital’s third album Snivilisation, released a few weeks after Glastonbury) begins with beautiful, looped strings – think ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ if the needle was stuck. The strings persist for the duration of the nine-minute track like a fly trapped in a jar, and synths are sprinkled over a two-note drone that also repeats until the end. And then comes ‘Chime’, the band’s debut single, first released in December 1989. For a minute, the Hartnoll brothers tantalise the crowd (and us) with bailiff-banging-on-the-door beats, hand claps, and a fraction of the shimmering keyboard that is the main reason ‘Chime’ is such a memorable, timeless, euphoric track – a classic that is, as one astute person has written on YouTube, “goosebumps on top of goosebumps.” The Glastonbury performance of the track is the antithesis to the 1990 Top of the Pops performance, which saw the brothers playfully sulk about being prevented from playing ‘Chime’ live by placing their plugs on top of their mixers while wearing anti-Poll Tax T-shirts.
Paul Hartnoll said in a BBC Radio 4 interview last year that “unlike punk, which railed against the system, and was shouting and trying to fight the system, we didn’t do that. We just all got together in a field or in a club and just did our thing, and just said we’re not part of what you do – we’re just going to go over here and do what we want.” Well, this was precisely why the Establishment got involved. As the late Mark Fisher wrote in relation to raves and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994:
“At any point collectivity can be rediscovered, reinvented…It could flare up in any festivity that goes on ‘too long’, in any workplaces or university occupation that refuses the ‘necessity’ of drudgery, in any flourishing of a group consciousness that rejects the ‘inevitability’ of competitive individualism.”
Well, we can’t have that, can we?
Glastonbury 1994 is out now on London Records
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Review by Neil Laurenson
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