Orbital tweeting Dick and Dom is all the goodness we need right now

We're all agreed that Twitter is an open sewer. A torrent of streaming mouth bums. The equivalent of a cavalcade of Celine Dion albums smashing into your face until the end of time. 

But every now and then, there is a moment of hope. A silver lining around the cloud of guff. That glimmer of goodness came in this tweet: 

Orbital are chatting to Dick and Dom. Everything's going to be okay. pic.twitter.com/Z6ksQLllyC

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) April 2, 2020

 

And here it is again with, for reason whatsoever, kittens: 

That's right. Techno behemoths Orbital had a nice how-do-you-do exchange with children's telly legends Dick and Dom. 

I suspect a collaboration is afoot. Acid Pants In Da Bungalow. Satan In Da Bungalow. Da Box In Da Bungalow. You get the idea. 

Orbital once made a video with Play School presenter Brian Cant. Play School had different shaped windows for children to look through, no doubt reflecting the big-fish small-fish cardboard-box shapes made by ravers. Also, they had a giant egg person called Humpty, which sounds like a standard hallucination at Shroom if you ask me. 

Shroom was a nightclub, by the way. It was important in the development of acid house and that happy smiley face symbol you see everywhere. Shroom rhymes with Button Moon, which was a children's programme about a pot-headed man who had astral visions and spent most of his time using kitchen utensils to get high.

As I said in that Brian Cant blog post, kid's characters have played a part in club culture. The Prodigy sampled Charly the cat for their debut hit in 1991, and Global Communication's Mark Pritchard scored an early top ten as Shaft with a raved-up Roobarb And Custard theme tune. My most scratched seven-inch, destroyed from overuse, is probably Smart E's druggie kids anthem Sesame's Treet. You can guess what that samples.

I'll get back to my 1995 albums contest soon. I just thought I'd share this moment of levity amid the chaos. A happy face amid the scowls. A thumbs-up amid the angry fists. A sunbeam amid the drizzle. A parking space amid the lack of parking spaces. A nice pair of trousers amid the dirty undies. Ew. I'll stop now.

Further Fats: It's a magic carpet ride, every door will open wide to happy people like you (2007)

Further Fats: Live tweeting at the Brits - the full text (2009)

Best electronic albums of 2016: nine

9 – Mark Pritchard – Under the Sun (Warp Records)

Mark Pritchard is a phenomenon. Two of the bestest modern ambient albums of all time (76:14 and Remotion), the man behind Shaft's Roobarb & Custard (yep!) and Harmonic 313, and now this stunning breakthrough– his first solo album as actual real-life Mark Pritchard.

As Under The Sun spreads its Boards of Canada and Eno-isms thinly across a neverending horizon, sometimes it seems we’re caught in a trippy Wicker Man alternative reality, all English gardens and ‘70s haze and folk songs. Space flutes. Quivering organs.

Is there anything this man can’t do? Astronauting, maybe. Fine art. Advanced haberdashery. Deep sea oil exploration. Dog surgery. I’m sure he can’t do any of these. Tennis coaching. Atom splitting. The Macarena. Speaking Welsh. Jeez, can Pritchard do ANYTHING? I mean, really.



Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.