Reissue of the Week: Orbital 2 (The Brown Album Expanded)

‘The Brown Album’ pays testament to the thrilling, sometimes contradictory power of rave as a culture, just months before it splintered, says Joe Muggs

1993 was the last hurrah of rave’s original explosion. In 1994 the Criminal Justice Act would serve as a symbolic clamping down on raving. If you wanted to be fanciful you might paint a picture of it as a boot coming down and smashing the scene’s unity into a million social and stylistic pieces, but in fact things were already fragmenting. Rave culture was still at fever pitch in 1993, but the centre couldn’t hold. All the various elements that had gone into it were pulling away in their own directions, as were new formulations. Certain sounds – jungle, goa trance, happy hardcore, garage, Artificial Intelligence electronica, “handbag” / glam house – were starting to become so distinct as to have their own infrastructure. By 94, they’d really be speciated into scenes, but in 1993, for all the tensions and furious creative diversification, it was still just – just – possible to talk about rave music and rave culture as such.

Of course some will question that, and plenty would at the time. But for all that there were protective purists for various sub-scenes there were also still enough people ping-ponging between styles and parties, and enough who still had Castlemorton in the rear view mirror, for the sense that there was some kind of centre – around which casuals, crusties, students, fashion people, jazzers and all the rest orbited – to make some kind of sense. And if you want proof of that, it’s right here in Orbital’s second album, which landed at the start of 1993.

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