Orbital Announce Optical Delusion UK tour
Pioneering electronic music duo Orbital have today announced an extensive UK & tour to follow the release of their new studio album Optical Delusion, out February 17, 2023 via London Records (pre-order). Orbital’s Optical Delusion UK Tour will kick off on March 28th in Glasgow and culminate in Brighton on April 8th. Stand by for news of Irish dates.
TICKETS ON SALE THIS WEEK:
O2 Presale: Wednesday 14th December 10am
Artist Presale: Wednesday 14th December 10am
Live Nation Presale: Thursday 15th December 10am
General On Sale: Friday 16th December 10am
With Optical Delusion, their tenth studio album, Orbital dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and beguiling images from recent times, when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnoll brothers watched on TV as kids finally came true. The album’s lead single, the BBC6 Music playlisted lead single “Dirty Rat”, is an incendiary collaboration with Sleaford Mods whose brilliant video has swiftly racked up half a million views. This week, the band released a second track from Optical Delusion, “Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)”, in which a classic, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’, the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.
The new album is the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for Orbital, who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House. Earlier this year an Orbital thirtieth anniversary package 30 Something – featuring reinterpretations of “Chime”, “Satan”, “Belfast” and more by fans ranging from Jon Hopkins to ANNA to David Holmes, plus studio versions of Orbital live favourites – reintroduced Paul and Phil Hartnoll to a worldwide fanbase.
