Orbital to reissue 1991 debut album ahead of The Green & Brown Album Tour
The Hartnoll brothers' upcoming live UK and Ireland tour has been expanded to include their 1993 LP 'The Brown Album'
Orbital are reissuing their 1991 debut 'The Green Album', ahead of their upcoming live tour highlighting their first two self-titled LPs.
The special edition quadruple-vinyl box set of 'The Green Album' features 20 remastered tracks including the original US cassette bonus cut 'Steel Cube Idolatry', live versions of 'Chime' and 'Midnight' and previously unreleased tracks ‘Open Your Mind’ and ‘The Other One’. 'Belfast / Wasted (Wasted Vocal Mix)', the Rhyme & Reason vocal-led version of 'Satan' and a Sasha remix of 'Midnight' also feature on the tracklist.
The new deluxe reissue package contains a 60-page book by journalist Andrew Harrison with a track-by-track breakdown by Phil and Paul Hartnoll themselves, a slipmat and three reprinted flyers from the early '90s. Orbital's web store also lists cassette, double-LP (on colour and black vinyl), double-CD and deluxe quadruple-CD versions of the 'The Green Album' reissue, all out on 19th April.
This spring, Orbital will begin their 'The Green Album' live tour, which has been expanded to include 1993's 'The Brown Album', stopping throughout the UK and Ireland. (The UK duo's first two self-titled LPs became known as their current titles after fans developed the nicknames to distinguish between them.)
"With time on our hands now, we thought we’d go back to our original idea which was to play BOTH 'The Green' and 'Brown' albums", Orbital wrote on Instagram last week. "We had been cautious to put both in at the start as we had no idea how long it would take to prepare the tracks, but it’s been so much fun preparing this show we just felt it would be rude to not include 'The Brown Album' too."
The shows will be split in two halves by an intermission, with 'The Green Album' leading the night and 'The Brown Album' closing out. The tour starts on 24th April in Exeter and ends in Dublin on 5th May, with concerts in Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester and more set for in between.
There's no word yet if there are plans to give 'The Brown Album' the same remaster and reissue treatment since it's been added to the tour programme. A series of limited-edition remastered 12-inches of Orbital's earliest singles is still to come.
Orbital's latest LP of all new music is 2023's 'Optical Delusion', featuring the single 'Are You Alive?'. In 2022, the Hartnoll brothers marked three decades of making music together with the '30 Something' remix compilation. 'The Green Album' hit 'Belfast' was reworked by Yotto for the anniversary box set.
Find more information about the tour and reissue via Orbital's website and webstore. See the full list of dates for The Green and Brown Albums tour below.
Revisit Joe Roberts' 2023 interview with Orbital ahead of the release of their tenth LP, 'Optical Delusion', in which they discuss working on the LP in lockdown, 'Chime''s live evolution and more.
