With all the reissues, represses, anniversary editions and everything else, its easy to miss the moment when something comes along (Again) with some genuine cultural significance attached to it. As the opening line of this piece would suggest, Glastonbury 1994 is a release that’s worth at least understanding better.
The back story is colourful but would take too long to recount here, so with savage brevity Orbital were the first outfit from the so called dance music underground to play a main stage at the world’s most famous festival, a seismic event in the movement’s history and one which not least transformed festival booking policy forever.
A big part of the energy it generated was down to the presence of Channel 4 broadcasting live from the site, but the brothers Hartnoll still had a lot of doubters to prove wrong when they entered the stage with their head mounted torches at the ready.
It helped that they were at their early creative peak in the wake of releasing the “Brown” album the previous year, but even without the still available lo-res archive footage for company, Glastonbury 1994 is a triumph, the pair traversing the sine waves between acid house, harder edged techno and ambient moods seamlessly. The most fun you could have thirty odd years ago standing in a field at Worthy Farm, it’s now probably the most fun you can have with some glo-sticks, silently ‘avin it in your living room. For authenticity, just add mud.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 