Orbital team up with Sleaford Mods on the new song ‘Dirty Rat.’
The seminal electronic duo emerged from the rave era, blending club tropes with different compositional ideas. The Hartnoll brothers reformed to huge acclaim, and their last studio album ‘Monsters Exist’ landed in 2018.
Sleaford Mods’ new album ‘Optical Delusion’ will be released on February 17th, matching their cutting-edge production to several guests. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’ is a case in point – beginning as a remix swap, it’s a full-blown collaboration of Orbital with Sleaford Mods.
Jason Williamson’s barbed lyrics perfectly augment Orbital’s concrete-heavy digitalism, with the frontman lambasting the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital / blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel / blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”
“This track is a giant capital letter,” explains Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll. “Like in the Book of Kells, where the very first letter gets the big treatment from the monk when he’s doing his illustrated borders. It’s got that old-school dance music vibe with bits of Cabaret Voltaire and even bits of The Shamen. It’s a little bit of punk rock, nice and loud. A refreshing, ‘wake up’ kind of track. And Jason is just brilliant!”
A track that sounds more and more timely by the minute, ‘Dirty Rat’ attempts to engage with some of the darker aspects of the British psyche.
“I guess it’s about telling people to take responsibility for their own actions,” adds Phil Hartnoll. “You know, all these politicians don’t come from out of nowhere. Somebody keeps voting them in. So who might that be…?”
A track that sounds more and more timely by the minute, ‘Dirty Rat’ attempts to engage with some darker aspects of the British psyche. Jason Williamson adds: “The ongoing culture of non-thought mostly exists because of a lack of education in critical thought. How do you mobilize a people firmly imprisoned by a concrete system?”
Tune in now: