Orbital - Optical Delusion

One of electronic music's most enduring and beloved acts returns with their tenth studio album, and it is as inventive and alive as anything the Hartnoll brothers have made in their remarkable three-decade career. Recorded at Orbital's Brighton studio, Optical Delusion is Paul and Phil Hartnoll's first collection of new material since 2018's Monsters Exist, arriving on the heels of their 30th anniversary celebrations and sounding like a band who have lost none of their hunger or their spark.

The album's collaborator list is one of the most eclectic and genuinely surprising of any record in their catalog. Sleaford Mods bring their characteristically caustic energy to proceedings. Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, and The Little Pest contribute their own distinct vocal textures. Croatian actress and musician Dina Ipavic and Japanese vocalist Coppe add further global breadth to a record that ranges widely and adventurously across its runtime. And then there is the presence of The Medieval Baebes, the early music vocal ensemble whose appearance on an Orbital album in 2023 is precisely the kind of unpredictable, genre-defying move that has always kept the Hartnolls a step ahead of expectation.

Thematically, the album is a meditation on the nature of reality and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, a subject that feels entirely urgent and entirely suited to the sprawling, immersive electronic architecture that Orbital have been building and refining since "Chime" announced them to the world in 1990. Smart, warm, political, and danceable in equal measure, Optical Delusion is Orbital at their most fully realized and most necessary.