Image by Rosie Marks
It’s surprising that someone as iconic as Joy Orbison should put out their first full length release twelve years into their career. Since his debut in 2009, Orbison has enjoyed an illustrious métier as one of the foremost innovators on the U.K underground, all off the back of a series of hugely successful and incredibly influential singles and EPs. From the slow burning dubstep of his debut Hyph Mngo to the more experimental explorations of 2019’s Slipping EP, Orbison’s music has arguably shaped the sound of London’s underground to the point that James Blake and The xx owe him endless gratitude. His specific brand of U.K club music forms have been distinct. His versions of garage, dubstep, and house with an inherent cool factor and penchant for obscure vocal samples subsequently pushes the genres forward in their approach. Still Slipping Vol.1, released by XL Recordings is an affirmation of his reign as the scene’s most apparent pathfinder, with the breadth the mixtape format giving Orbison the space to explore the gamut of his aesthetic oeuvre.
The mixtape continues the path set forward by Slipping, both in namesake and atmospherics. Slipping was a deep dive into Orbison’s preoccupation with the human voice, weaving passages of everyday conversation and processed vowel intonations into the folds of compositions inspired by those same voices. Even the artists Orbison elects to feature in his work utilise the voice as an expressive medium, a host of spoken word artists, rappers and performance poets who make art from the cadence of casual conversation. He continues the espousing of this preoccupation here. Opening track w / dad & frankie constructs its universe of abstract synth sounds and a brassy bass guitar riff around the quotidian nonsense of household chatter. On swag w / kav, Orbison enlists celebrated spoken word artist James Messiah on an intro that frames Messiah’s flow as the track’s basic principle, later finding itself enamoured with the possibilities of filtering and processing a sample of the word “falling.” In the age of the voicenote, sometimes these bits provide a vaguely meta commentary on the music itself. The buzzing bass reverb of sparko concludes with a voice speaking what may very well be the defining statement of this body of work: “The second you change the language to mixtape, nobody cares.” The final moments of the Autechre-esque minimal bass s gets jaded is given to a clipped sample who giggles and chirps “back on that one again, are you?,” at once winking towards Orbison’s more lofty experimentations and his ability to poke fun at himself.
Download Still Slipping Vol. 1 here
But while Slipping centred itself on the potential of the human voice, Still Slipping Vol. 1 is much broader in its scope. Mostly, there is a more vehement focus on the abstract. The casual chatter is sometimes stretched and processed into elongated gibberish sounds, collaged beneath ambient dronings and bassy distortions. The mixtape is sequenced as such that moments of total experimentation are bookended by more accessible versions of Orbison. In a sense, the mixtape is an amalgamation of Orbison’s signature moves placed together under the same umbrella, becoming a sort of reminiscence on where he has been. The echo of Hyph Mngo’s synthy dub can felt across tracks like forth slipping and layer 6, while s gets jaded and glorious amateurs allow Orbison to play with his love of abstract sound design. bernard? and sparko seem to find a middle ground between these two Orbisons, with the former placing a hip hop beat and the latter a booming interpolation of breakbeat beneath Orbison’s abstractions. There are more straightforward moments. better is a groove driven smooth house cut with a deep, pulsing beat modulation that reminds us of Orbison’s skillset in funk, and a perfectly breathy vocal take from Lea Sen that is the closest answer the mixtape has to a hook. Closing track born slipping (spot the Underworld reference) is quintessential club Orbison, a chic house track that oozes with equal parts style and rumination, concluding in a minute long recording of a conversation that could easily have unfolded over a cup of tea. Elsewhere, the rain soaked melancholy of ‘rraine is a potently poignant take. Chiming, distorted chords and a pitched down vocal sample simmer beneath slow kicks, evolving into a mechanical requiem that recalls the trip-hop aesthetic of Massive Attack. Following the breakbeat bass warble of runnersz, it makes for Still Slipping Vol. 1’s most emotionally dense moment.
There are times here where Orbison risks losing himself to the semantics. Phrases are obsessed over a moment too long, fixated upon beyond their message and towards overkill. “The second you change the language to mixtape, nobody cares,” can become a statement easy to escape behind, but Obrison holds it together by virtue of his own visionary. His eventual embrace of the long play format comes with Orbison’s awareness of the space his voice occupies in electronic music, playing directly to the strengths that continue to distinguish him as a formidable trailblazer. Still Slipping Vol.1 has plausibly been a decade in the making, and is not so much a new horizon for Orbison as it an essential point of departure for whatever may come next.
Listen to ‘rraine from Still Slipping Vol. 1 below.
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