Snivilisation

1994 was an amazing year. At a Halloween party that year, I hooked up with a beautiful Asian woman dressed as a cat (she could have been any nationality now that I think about it, and was dressed as an Asian cat - anything was possible in '94). I was dressed up as The Joker. Jack Nicholson's Joker in Tim Burton's Batman to be precise. She and I left the party to go to her place and fool around. Before things got too deep, she paused and said, "Now go into the bathroom and take off your makeup. I want to see what the real Joker looks like." We'd been making out a while, and she had some of my Joker makeup on her face so it was hard for me to take her seriously. I told her this was my true appearance. Apparently, I was quite protective of my secret identity back in those days. We all were. I went down on her as the Joker instead. That's who I am. I'm a giver. That's as far as we got. Joker Brand Products didn't include Joker Brand Condoms in '94. If they existed, they'd surely be purple and shaped like a smiley face. I still think about that little minx a lot. We probably could have built a wonderful life together. 1994 was also the year Jackie Kennedy, Kurt Cobain, and Nicole Brown Simpson died. It was the year when the baseball strike cancelled the World Series, and this album was released. So it wasn't all hooking up with Saucy Asian Felines, even though it felt like it was. I also met my future wife a week after that Halloween party. We were married for 9 years until she divorced my ass, but have two wonderful children together who continue to amaze, inspire and fill me with joy everyday. What I'm saying is a lot of good things came out of 1994, but this album certainly wasn't one of them. Thankfully it wasn't on my radar in '94. In fact, I didn't have to suffer listening to any of this until today. But life's funny like that. Maybe I went to that Halloween party because there was no World Series. If the Joker had more than one night with that Asian Cat Lady, I would have never met my (first) wife, would never have experienced the joy of my children. Which reminds me: on our first date, my wife and I went to the movies. I wanted to see Pulp Fiction, but went the safe route and chose Forest Gump. And I bet if we saw Pulp Fiction that night, we'd still be married. That Asian Cat Lady would have LOVED Pulp Fiction as much as I still do. Maybe if this album was playing at her apartment after that Halloween party, I would have gladly washed off my Joker makeup. Maybe we would have had unprotected sex. Anything to drown out this album.

The bleeps where very bleepy and the bloops where just as bloopy. Not something I would of seeked out but glad I gave it a listen.

Although Orbital's music is classified as "techno" there can be no doubt the brothers' skills transcend that poppy genre and this album is their finest work. It is a concept album so you must listen to it from beginning to end and every track (with one exception) is excellent. The album comes to a climax on "Are We Here?". Perhaps what is most commendable about Orbital is their ability to build a beat in the abscence of a central boom-boom beat that is so common in electronic music. If you listen closely, the beat is actually built by layering the loops carefully so as to build a rhythm that dances around where the beat would be.

Felt like I was on hold for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Tech-NO

Listening to this record is like having to watch your 6 year old brother after he just got done snorting pixie sticks and there’s no sign of his sugar high ever wearing off. Overly busy, grating electronica. Zero chill. It’s maddening.

Is it a dance fest, am I playing Sims, or is this a happy hardcore party? Definitely a bit too crazy for me to listen to during work.

I so wish that this kind of stuff was breaking when I turned 18. Trap and Dubstep will always have a special place but this is so much more interesting and mind blowing. Totally out of control soundscape that transports you to a different universe via an aural blackhole. This record is the 50m high solid gold gate that leads to the other astral dimensions we've been seeking since the beginning of time.

Mysterious secrets of the rave. Minimalism, experimentalism, and classic techno collide. Conceptually rich, diverse and epic.

“Snivilisation”, a title with Gen X reek: easy cynicism, a cheap pun, comfortable edginess. Slowly, the kids are beginning to hate us as much as the Boomers… Dated title apart, this is alright. Better heard on headphones if not in a club, my favourite parts creep around the ears, just a little off-kilter. The sarcastic corporate samples are largely tiresome, reminders of well-worn 90’s cynicism. The best clichéd 90’s sample source will always be “Robocop”, or “Scarface” if you’re listening to the Wu Tang Clan. Unlikely to seek out again, but wouldn’t complain if someone put it on. Two point seven. Was three, but ending the record with two ten minutes-plus tracks is a contemptible move.

Excellent background music, but not much that drives it into the foreground for me.

Packed with personality and filled with surprising twists and turns. Great beats with music that kept me guessing. Those overlapping piano loops in “Kein Trink Wasser” are beautiful. Highlights: “Sad but True,” “Crash and Carry,” “Kein Trink Wasser,” “Attached”

I seldom listen to electronic music so I am woefully unfamiliar with this genre and the artists who practice in it. Nice to get more intros into the form through this project. This is a really good album. I've moved beyond old prejudices I held before; the ones that had me declare "I prefer music made with REAL instruments" in some misguided torch-bearing for 'authentic' music or some such made-up nonsense standard. I am very grateful to be far more open to music made by, well, anything. I'll experience it how I experience it, or at least I do my best to program my mind to receive and perceive all art through that process. This album has some excellent music in it and I enjoyed the experience of listening to it. At times, it was a little too frenetic for me, but I understand this band was into the rave thing and that kind of music is probably right for that scene. (I'll bet that sentence comes across as unhip and square as I am in real life ;-) I am very early in learning music, mostly as a guitarist but also a little voice and piano as well as music theory through my various studies. Honestly, this album has piqued my interest in this genre, so I won't be surprised if I add it my course of studies.

Acid, experimental, eerie sounds and so modern that I sometimes forget that this is more the 25 years old.

Orbital! I didn't realize they'd made this album. THANK YOU TO THIS LIST for enlightening me. Ever since Halcyon+on+on, I've been a fan. Easy 5 stars.

this takes me back, playing in the room of every cool kid in college in the early days before we all figured out that nobody among us was really cool at all. Typical Orbital, ravey but pleasant and melodic without being too challenging, not bad really although the vocal samples are pretty annoying in places

Wow. The. Repetitive. Nature. Of. EDM/House Music. Is. Not. My Jam. Sorry, Orbital - I am definitely not your target audience so I'm rating this one as such. I'd never revisit this. There are a couple of positives I did take away from this album that I will never listen to willingly again: the first 4 "songs" didn't grate on me. This earlier portion of the record was fairly easy to do some "deep work" to as it played in the background. Some of the tracks, like Crash and Carry, had some melodic spots. And then things completely traversed into noisy EDM repetition, including "songs" more than 15 minutes long that made me want to jump off the closest bridge. Memory unlocked: I do recall there being an Orbital song on the EDM/electronica-heavy soundtrack for the forgettable 90s movie "The Saint," though - why I bought that as a teen, I do not remember. Certainly not because of Orbital (sorry, Orbital). Interesting factoid (only one this time) from Wikipedia: *The band released the album at the time of the launch of the Criminal Justice Act, the legislation that gave British Police greater legal powers to break up unlicensed raves that gave Orbital its name. The Are We Here? single featured the track "Are We Here? (Criminal Justice Bill?)", which consists of four minutes of complete silence. Standouts: Forever, Crash and Carry

Wow, amazing album. One of the Best things that happened in 1994. I have never heard about this band until 1001. Thank you!

Snivilisation is a really weird album (probably because it's an electronic album and those have often been pretty weird). There are things that i like about it and things that i don't like about it. This album does have plenty of cool beats, some well done melodies and enough 90s charm to be really memorable. I thought i was gonna give this album a 4 but as it kept going, i soon realized that towards the end, it was just going to drag itself out especially with it's last two songs which easily pass the 10 minute mark. The album did get pretty tiring towards the end but i still liked the majority of it. Best Song: Crash And Carry Worst Song: I Wish I Had Duck Feet

Hm. Probably not a good combination to get Bjork on one day, and Orbital the next, but that's the way it goes somedays. I'd actually gotten the other Orbital album in this collection early on ("Orbital 2"), and I'd have to say I'm hard pressed to distinguish between the two albums. I enjoy their music overall, but more as background music than an active listening experience, and I find it hard to believe that this was intended to be rave/dance music, frankly, but then again I wasn't living in the UK during that time, or seeing the Orwellian impact of things like the Criminal Justice Act, which it seems Orbital was railing against. (That said, the US has had its own share of social decay and disintegration over the decades highlighted by misguided political strongarm tactics.) "Crash and carry" and "Quality seconds" were the only two tracks that I noticed, the former for being more dance-oriented and the latter for being almost Ministry-style. A few years after this album was released, I remember discovering an internet radio station labeled "Music to code by", and this fits that bill quite well both then and now. (I wish I could remember the site that provided access to these curated "stations"; I think it was something like Live365 but with a different name, and plagued by *lots* of buffering and outages, but regardless I remember that particular station had more Everything But the Girl and Portishead than Orbital, but still....) And while it's waaay too long, even for the ambience, the album has a creative/amusing cover.

This was pretty good actually. If some of the songs were shorter it would have been better though.

Nice house/dance vibes with Snivilisation, great to chill out to or have in the background whilst working/studying. Best: Science Friction Worst: Are We Here?

So that's two Orbital albums and zero They Might Be Giants. We're in the last 200 albums of this experiment now. No Lemonade. No Breeders, Ween, Whitney Houston. Two Orbital albums, though. I mean I get maybe putting one on here to represent this corner of the music world. But what can two Orbital albums do for us that a single The End of the Tour cannot?

Can’t believe this was 1994….

Great synth soundscape.

There's a special place in my heart for this album, even though I haven't listened to it in a long time. I discovered Orbital around the time I started my first year of college (2009), which was a time of great musical exploration for me, going to club nights and gigs in the city for the first time, and of course music festivals. I actually got free tickets to see Orbital that year (or maybe it was the year after) and went with a friend, had a brilliant time. This album was always my favourite of theirs, so takes me back to those days. Theirs some really interesting blending of styles on here, and the few vocals there are offer interesting critique of technology's impact of society, advertising, and also the crackdown on electronic music in the 90s. I'm not sure if I picked up on all that before, but after a couple of closer listens it all makes sense. The standout tracks for me are Forever, Kein Trink Wasser, and Are We Here, but there's not really any weak tracks imo.

Holds up exceptionally well in my opinion

Expected to hate this, but loved it.

As a huge Brown album convert, I could never get into this album on previous occasions. Something is happening however today, I'm really digging it. Feel like I'm waking up to this record for the first time. Maybe it's something about the hooks, they're less obvious, insistent perhaps, but they're there. I'm loving every track in different ways. Finished very strongly as well with Are we Here and Attached. Going into rotation.

Rating: 9/10 Best songs: Forever, Sad but true, Crash and carry, Kein trink wasser, Quality seconds, Are we here?

Extremely good album. Together with Insides, Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Exit Planet Dust, probably my favourite 4 electronic albums from the 90s.

Fantastic album, arguably Orbital's best work.

Very interesting and enjoyable.

This album is so cool! Can’t believe it wasn’t on my radar before now. Right up my alley.

Incredible

Beep boop beep

IDM with deep themes? That's like catnip to me. Love this so much.

Fantastic

Cool soundtrack

Decent until Crash and Carry, then it becomes amazing.

cool

My wife introduced me to Orbital, and this is one of the albums she had a physical copy of and was in high rotation. For people who know me they would understand that I Wish I Had Duck Feet is a fave. I really like Philosophy by Numbers and the way it feels more like an extension of Science Friction. Kein Trink Wasser, Quality Seconds are great and Are We Here? is another favourite.

Not necessarily the Orbital album I woulda chosen, but what the hell, you can't go too far wrong. This is very much the sort of chin-stroking intellect-masturbatory music that appeals to the specific type of nerd that I am. I started out being a nowt-but-metalhead but I could see the utility in ambient music for soothing scene-setting. Orbital was the first act that made me think I could enjoy upbeat electronica too. Fave track - "Forever", maybe, or "Are We Here?" - I'd happily listen to the whole album again at the drop of a hat though...

Partially too experimental, but in general - an epic electronic opus

This is right up my street. Added to my collection, heard a fair bit of dirge from orbital, and some that I absolutely love, (illuminate is my absolute fave and I can't stand David Gray usually). Anyway, this was a great listen, not one for every day, but great end of busy week relaxing album.

Pretty good beats to relax to.I was doing other stuff while I was listening.Perfect for that.

I like it

A peculiar album, even the repetitiveness of the album doesn't make it boring, it makes you follow a kinda dream. It's just so interesting to hear but I don't think it's and album to hear everyday or every moment

I’ve listened to orbital before and loved them so seeing this album come up got me excited and it was a really good listen! All tracks I really enjoyed.

Amazingly groundbreaking IDM from the 90's. Still sounds fresh and new.

Exactly what my brain needed on a stressful Wednesday morning. Orbital are at their best when they're doing more chilled-out stuff.

Very cool electronica. Enjoyed it a lot

Huge part of my 90s soundtrack

Very unique ambiance, I love it !

Found a new favorite artist

richtig gutes Album, schön abwechslungsreicher Elektro

Awesome

Actually really enjoyed this. Got some avalanches, panda bear and bull ant vibes.

Tracks 1 through 8 come and go. Nothing fancy, nothing that stands out besides the personal favorite "Philosophy by Numbers". Tracks 9 and 10 though, OH BOY. I wish the whole album sounded like that. Overall, 3.5/5. But I'm gonna give it a 4 in favor of those two final tracks.

beep boop a lot of this rocked. my cat lied down on the desk while this was on, i think he was feeling it

Some boring and irritating stuff in the middle but overall this is much much more interesting than most acid house albums (more of a singles format). Makes me feel remiss for never having checked these guys out more.

Loved it

Wow. What a surprise. Never heard it before and it’s such a beauty.

One day I'll work out the difference between Orbital and The Orb. Today is not that day. Feels like a great version of bleep bloop music in any case.

Twas paired very well with my crazily dark and foggy drive (with lots of car lights) to work and back! Never really bothered listening to this group, so came as a nice surprise.

Great focus music.

Revolutionary at the time I'm sure. Now it's background music for working a tech job.

Trippy

I’ve never heard of Orbital before, but I’ve enjoyed a lot of the electronica music that I’ve reviewed so far, so I expect I’ll probably enjoy this album too. I enjoyed this album quite a bit, and it’s definitely in the upper tier of electronica albums I’ve listened to, especially from the nineties. I was a bit daunted by this album’s run time when I was reading about it, but the 75 minutes that I spent listening to it really flew by. The music was really varied, and I liked all of the elements that went into it. A few notes on some specific songs I liked: -The flame noises at the end of “Forever” were really cool, and they went along perfectly with the speech about condemnation. -“I Wish I Had Duck Feet” reminded me of Crystal Castles (I love their music, don’t like Ethan Kath), with the vibrating effect that they used on the vocals (I think “Magic Spells” is the song it reminded me of) -“Science Friction” was probably my favorite song on the album. I loved the lighter musical tones that were used. -I loved the piano on "Kein Trink Wasser,” it added a really great eighties vibe to the overall sound. -Even though it was the shortest part of the album, "Quality Seconds" was awesome, with its heavy rock sound This was a really good album overall. It’s not something I’d listen to every day, but I’ll definitely come back to it at some point.

This is incredibly unique

This would have been a kickass video game soundtrack. After "Orbital 2" put a sour taste in my mouth over two years ago, this finally won me over. Great boops, great beeps, can imagine Earthworm Jim shooting over it - only three things a good electronica album needs.

Interesting to listen to. It's funny to me to see that this was recorded in the beginning of the 90s. There's something timeless to it.

Really enjoyed it so different but familiar as well. 8/10

Honestly thought this was so good for electronic music. Some of the songs were a bit similar but enough variety where you could put it on in the background and enjoy. I liked this album a lot, especially compared to some other electronic music I’ve listened to.

Looked at the genre and length of this record and expected a bit of a slog but, I was pleasantly surprised. Very atmospheric and textured with a good variety too. While it does become a little bloated towards the end of the record it still ends up feeling like a journey throughout the soundscape.

Techno. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

We get such a strange assortment of European house/techno type albums, I had no idea where this would fall (and this is actually our second from Orbital). This one's great though! Some really bizarre and interesting textures on here, surprised how many of these long songs I really liked. Great album! I'd say nix the previous Orbital album in favor of this one, we really don't need two. Favorite tracks: I Wish I Had Duck Feet, Sad But True, Kein Trink Wasser, Are We Here. Album art: Wasn't keen on this at first glance but it's growing on me already. It's all grey, but looks to be some wires or headphones contorted into the shape of a person? Some little cars driving around the perimiter too, not sure what's going on. This is cool though. 4/5

Big fan but I love this type of music to zone out and work to.

Never listened to these guys until now, but this is definitely making me consider checking out the rest of their discography.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4. Really, the only reason I’m not at a straight 4 is because Attached is such a fucking deflating last track. That was 12 minutes of a glorified loop and it just felt like a really sour note to end a really good album. Regardless, I will not let the final 12 minutes dictate what the first 63 gave to me, which was pretty fucking good. There’s some really fun soundscapes here, and while a lot of it leans into VGM-adjacent territory, I’ve just been listening to a lot of VGM lately, so this sort of soundscape fell right into my recent comfort zone. I think the production choices and sound design for most of this album are really good, and there’s a huge variety of synths to work with, and a lot of it comes together in a pretty harmonious way. The layering that builds up each track to get to something really concrete was well done throughout most of this album, and I found myself just vibing a lot. I do think the final 17 or so minutes of the album fall flat; that’s the final 4 minutes of Are We Here? and the entirety of Attached, but regardless, I found so much of this enjoyable to listen to that I’m completely fine with bumping it up to a 4. This is some quality stuff here, and I’m really glad it’s on this list.

A horrible album cover and name, but the Orbital folks have delivered another interesting album. The hypnotic beats and music keep me entranced. This will be good for working. 4/5.

Nice, dance is not really my thing but this was easy to listen to

Creative, disjointed in a wonderful way, beautiful at times. Really just a fantastic listen.

hell yea techno

Ahh 90s electronic music - love the random beeps and bloops of analog synthesisers!!

Рейв-культура - не моё, но но звучит очень приятно, есть качающие и цепляющие треки классные (как у группы Koop).

A strong electronic album - slightly dated on the production side but doesn’t detract from its quality

Super record. Quality seconds indeed

7/10 - if this album was every other song it might be a 9 or a 10. But if it was only the songs that were excluded in that every other it would be like a 3 or a 4. The last 2 songs however are pretty decent. I can hear so much inspiration was pulled from albums like this. Even in the songs I don’t like it likely inspired other songs I don’t like. The second song reminds me a bit of a few topi songs that I don’t enjoy greatly.

Some hard hitting techno to ambient trance, this is a super tasteful collection of the electronic scene done well. Really nice tones and movement in the song structures that get you right in the zone. Tracks like "Science Fiction" have a way of feeling floaty and meditative without going full on "Pure Moods" on you. "Kein Trink Wasser", for instance, has that big Chicago house piano energy at first but goes into an unusual chamber direction that you can bop to without even dropping a drum beat. Look for more range on the sprawling final 2 tracks featuring the jungle "Are We Here?" complete with the paper-slap snare over the top of a metallic snare and just about a thousand other drum sounds in between. This stuff is thinking way out of the box and that's why Orbital are legends.

Musical. Estaba bien, pero un poco repetitivo. Ambient-techno.

The evolution of electronic music!

This music rather passed me by at the time (I was aware of it, but never engaged with it). This is a pretty fine album, though it's really a bit long and rather overstays its welcome!.

first listen not that diverse in production but i found it meditative and nice

Quite cool actually

I think this is the second Orbital album I’ve been generated. The first was one of their self titled albums (the brown one) and I loved it. I have high hopes for today of some low-fi IDM that works like Ritalin. Let’s go! Songs I already knew: none Favourites: I Wish I Had Duck Feet, Are We Here This is just what I was hoping for. I had this playing while I was working today and it was great to have on while focusing on something. It isn’t overly technical, so never gets distracting, but is still interesting enough that it doesn’t feel boring in any way. As cliche as it may be, chill beats to study to are pretty great. And I never would have imagined I’d have said that before starting these daily reviews.

Was close between a 3 or 4 star for me, I’ve gone 4, few tracks went on for a little too long

Maybe not the most "essential" Orbital album, *Snivilisation* documents a transitional phase between the iconic *Orbital 2" and the bouncy and sonically more adventurous *In Sides* within the British band's discography--with more drum'n'bass rhythms, and less orthodox techno flourishes. The thing is, "transitions" can sometimes lead to an interesting offer that surprisingly ages better than expected (as witnessed in many key moments of this record: "Forever", " Sad But True", "Science Friction"...). The record loses the thread a little as it delves into increasingly grating dada experimental shenanigans (a tendency also found in *In Sides*, but probably better executed there). Yet the two last 10-minutes-plus epics "Are We here?" and "Attached" makes listening to this album until the end worthwhile. Aging well is not so easy in electronic genres. So I might revisit this album later on to confirm my suddenly large benevolent feelings here.   3.5/5 for the purposes of this list of "essential albums" (rounded up to 4)Which translates to a 8.5/10 grade for more general purposes (5+3).  Number of albums left to review: less than 300, approximately (I've temporarily lost count here) Number of albums I'll include in my own list: half so far, approximately Number of albums I *might*  include: a quarter, approximately (including this one) Number of albums I'll never include: another quarter (many others are more important to me)

Heeeel nice. Orbital 4 life.

really good