Orbital

Orbital are two brothers from Kent, Phil and Paul Hartnoll, who started making records together in 1989 and named themselves after the M25, the orbital motorway around London that sat at the heart of the early rave scene when acid house was new. It's a fitting name: their music loops and circles too, all spiralling synth lines and patient, rolling beats that take the long way round to the big payoff.

What set them apart from the faceless techno pack was the live show. The Hartnolls built their sets on improvisation, reshaping tracks on the fly instead of just pressing play, and that restlessness carries over onto record. "The Box", from 1996, is a slow-burning, cinematic piece that sounds more like a soundtrack to a lost spy film than a floor-filler, while "Halcyon & On & On" floats on pure euphoria. Signed to FFRR, they carried on into The Middle of Nowhere in 1999, home of the bright, bouncing "Style".

Even their sleeves had a theme, with stylised atomic orbitals on three of their album covers. Critics and record buyers both took to them, and they're an electronic act that crossed over onto alternative rock countdowns.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.