Brand new festival Shiiine On Birmingham launches in the city next month, with electronic dance music duo Orbital headlining. What’s On caught up with brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll to find out more...

Festival brand Shiiine On is launching a new one-day event at Birmingham’s O2 Academy next month. Shiiine On Birmingham’s impressive line-up includes more than 20 iconic bands as well as a Hacienda afterparty.

The all-day event is headlined by dance pioneers Orbital. The festival coincides with the release of the duo’s ninth album, Monsters Exist, which is out the following week.

“Where can I start? It’s a wonderful little album,” explains Phil Hartnoll, one half of Orbital. “We’ve been away from each other for five years, and this album has been quite refreshing - it’s a bit like when we first started. With some of the tracks, you can tell we’ve got something on our mind. If you know Orbital, you’ll know what I mean.”

“The state of the nation and the world at the minute makes me feel like putting together an anarcho-punk album and shouting at the system,” says the younger of the two brothers, Paul. “But I know that’s kind of infantile a lot of the time, especially artistically, so you’re better off doing what the rave culture did originally and live by example. We don’t agree with the government, we don’t agree with what’s going on, we’re not going to fight you, we’re just going to go and do our own thing over here, so bye! That terrified the government. The inspiration behind this album is just that. Okay, let’s make a nice album that you can listen to and enjoy, and let’s just all go off and enjoy our own thing and leave these monsters to exist on their own.”

Orbital are certainly no strangers to incorporating political and environmental commentary into their music, be it sampling John Major’s attack on travellers at their 1995 Glastonbury show, protesting against the poll tax bill or recording their track, The Girl With The Sun In Her Head, in a studio powered only by Greenpeace's mobile solar power generator.

“There’s a track on Monsters Exist called The Raid which discusses, through the medium of voiceover, things like over-population and people’s frustration with the world,” says Paul. “We also have a nice grand finale, with Brian Cox delivering a gothic, doom-laden but hopeful speech that he wrote especially for the album. Every time I watch a Brian Cox documentary, I think, ‘Oh my god, there are so many samples in this!’. But because there’s so much music in the background, I've never been able to sample the bits that I want, so I thought I'd just ask him whether he wanted to do something. Being as he’s an old raver anyway and he used to be in rock bands, he was straight in with it. He was brilliant!

“Our next single, Please Help UK, is just a dance track. There’s no sort of chant or anything like that, but we’re having fun with the imagery. It’s a bit rave-generation. There are some voiceovers and samples in there which are pretty direct. It’s a warning - mind your back, mind your back, they look like us!” 

Orbital will perform a full festival show, complete with upgraded production, when they appear at Shiiine On Birmingham next month. 

“We don’t tend to self-indulge and just play a whole new album at people,” says Paul. “If I went to see Status Quo, I'd be really pissed off if they didn’t play Caroline or Rocking All Over The World. You’ve got to play the party favourites. I’ve seen bands play old tracks and they look really grumpy. For me, every time I play one of those tracks, I think, ‘Without you, I wouldn’t be here’. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. We’ve got about three new tracks in the set at the moment, so we’ll probably play those, but we’ll keep them away from each other and make sure people get a proper ride of what they want.

“With regard to the production, we’ve come a long way from hanging a white sheet and using a slide projector behind us. We’ve got a whole stage of video wall, but in different shapes and sizes, with us sat in the middle of it all. We're constantly up doing the video content, which is obviously more important than just the screens. We’ve worked on it since December, and by the time we hit Shiiine On, it’ll be spot on.”

Shiiine’s line-up features Shed Seven, Happy Mondays, Embrace, Cast, Julian Cope and many more - so who is Phil most looking forward to seeing? “A Certain Ratio, definitely! I used to follow them around. Shack Up is one of my all-time favourite tracks, so I'll definitely be seeing them. Dreadzone, too - they’re old stable mates. There are a lot of bands like that. It’s going to be really fun for us; like a work’s party type of thing.”

Created in 1989 and well known for wearing trademark torches on their heads during their performances, Orbital played a huge part in the early rave scene. They’ve since enjoyed multiple Glastonbury headline performances and opened the 2012 Paralympics alongside the late Stephen Hawking.

“Our 1994 Glastonbury headline gig was a total blag,” explains Phil. “Glastonbury at the time was very rock and roll, and everybody was just gagging for that electronic sound. There were no dance fields or anything like that. It was great for the cause because Michael Eavis and everyone were like, ‘Oh Jesus, that went down well - two guys twiddling knobs! That was alright, wasn’t it!' It was great. We opened their eyes to electronic music.

“Playing alongside Stephen Hawking at the Paralympics - what a dude! It was some great idea of somebody, somewhere. He was doing a speech there, so he sent us his speech and we decoded it. We were performing it, and he was just so great. He wore the torch glasses, but to wear them he had to take his own glasses off and was as blind as a bat without them. But he was so up for it - he was such a star. I sent him a little edit of it, the actual performance. We had to cut it with a punk band and stuff like that, so I edited the track and he wrote back asking when we were going to release it. He was fucking great!”

Despite all these career-defining achievements, in October 2014 the duo announced on their official website that they were ‘hanging up their iconic torch glasses and parting ways for the final time’.

Commenting on the split, Paul says: “It’s funny, that self-employed lifestyle with your brother does have its pressures. I was really cross and angry with Phil, but at the same time, even if he annoys me now, it’s not the same. When you’re not talking to a family member, even if you’re really angry, you spend half your time arguing with them in your head and half the time with a black hole in your stomach because something’s wrong - there’s something unconcluded and nasty in your life. I don’t know how people live with it. I had a brief chat with Noel Gallagher about it during that period, and it was interesting talking to him. The look on his face said it all. I knew that feeling. There was anger there, but life’s too short to live with that.”

Although a negative at the time, the pair agree that the split has had a positive impact on both their relationship and Orbital.

“I thought he meant it when he said he wasn’t talking to me again,” says Phil. “That’s shit, isn’t it? What have I done? What did I do? Can you just remind me? When we’re playing and we look at each other, it’s not a scowl anymore, it’s a laugh and a joke - it’s brilliant. I couldn’t do it any other way. Rock and roll, let’s get on with it and enjoy it! That’s what was missing - enjoying doing it together. We were bogged down with our relationship, bogged down with the job. I'm not moaning or anything, but now all our children are growing up, there are fewer responsibilities, and I’ve got my brother back. Everything’s a win-win situation for me.

“We didn’t talk for five years, but I think it’s been a good thing” says Paul. “I went back to my roots, I went back to playing very small clubs and things like that, with no production, no front-of-house person, me setting up my own gear. That was really good and gave me more confidence going forward. It reminded me of when we started off in the early ’90s, doing raves and clubs. It really did prove to me that it’s really about the music. I feel like I'm in a different place now. It’s nice to stop and start again; it feels different. I think next time we need to do something like that, we’ll just have a year off, rather than fall apart”

Next year is Orbital’s 30th anniversary. 

“We’ll probably need to sum up our career somehow,” says Paul. “I started writing a book when I wasn't talking to my brother. I wasn’t having a go at him - it was more the other way round actually - and I think that was part of the process that got me back talking to him. I wrote 120 pages of my life, up to the age of 22, when I used to idolise him as a kid, and I kind of thought, ‘Ah, where did it all go wrong?’ So yes, we’re working on a book. Phil doesn’t want to write it, but he’ll do a series of interviews. He’ll do his half and I'll do mine, and we won’t read or know what each other has written. Someone will put it together almost as a ‘witness and prosecution’ kind of thing. We’re possibly going to get a documentary off the ground to celebrate that, and I’ve got another album that I want to do, to go along with the book - a biographical album which is mostly based on sampling sound and travelling around.”

Phil adds: “We’ve got a mini Christmas tour in December, too. We’re just really enjoying it, and that was what was missing before. You get into such a state and a pickle with relationships, and everything is all a big black cloud. Enjoying it was what was lost, but now it’s found.”

Orbital headline Shiiine On Birmingham at the city's O2 Academy on Saturday 8 September

Feature by Lauren Foster