William Orbit

William Orbit can't read or write music, and he can't play any conventional instruments to speak of.

But that hasn't stopped this unassuming English techno and ambient music star from rising to the No. 2 spot on the English pop-album charts with his new solo release, "Pieces in a Modern Style," a collection of high-tech electronic interpretations of music by such composers as John Cage, Henryk Gorecki, Ravel and Beethoven.

And his lack of formal musical training didn't stop Orbit from winning two Grammy Awards last year with Madonna, whose career he helped revive by co-producing and co-writing her 1998 comeback album, "Ray of Light." Pop's once-again matronly Material Girl shared another Grammy with Orbit a few months ago for their collaboration on "Beautiful Stranger," from the film soundtrack for "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me."

"People say I revitalized her career, and it's the other way around," said Orbit (real name: William Wainwright), who more recently teamed up with Madonna on her dance-styled remake of Don McLean's 1972 folk-rock hit, "American Pie."

"I'm reticent to talk about Madonna, because so much has been said," Orbit continued. "But I love working with her, and I'm so proud of 'Ray of Light.' She's given me a platform, and I've gotten a huge amount of exposure through working with her and being signed to her label. It won't surprise me if she collaborates with a lot of other people in the future, because that's her style. I'm a lucky guy."

Lucky, and plucky.

Orbit has done remix work on records by Prince, Seal, Sting and even some acts with more than one name, such as Depeche Mode, The Cure and Belinda Carlisle. A skilled producer and composer, and an at-best reluctant performer, he has created consistently unpredictable solo albums, beginning in the late 1980s under the name Strange Cargo (an ambient-house project that featured his young vocal protege, Beth Orton).

But his greatest strength is as a musical conceptualist who is able to redefine the sound and style of the artists he works with, most notably Madonna, who had publicly expressed contempt for techno music before teaming with Orbit. His production of the album "13" by English Britpop band Blur helped the group change from moping, Kinks-wannabes to a harder-edged, Pavement-styled alterna-rock outfit.

"In terms of style and helping people to find their particular voice, you just don't worry about making your own voice be heard as a producer," Orbit said from Los Angeles, where (thanks to "Ray of Light's" 12 million-plus sales) he now has an oceanfront home.

"A lot of art is random and serendipitous, and you have to make it fresh and alive, and not restate the same thing each time. It's like an inexperienced actor, and the director says: 'The key thing is, don't act.' And the actor says: 'I don't have to act?' And the director says: 'Trust me.' And they do, and they come to see what the magic is, and that they always had their voice.

"Your voice is your voice, and it will come through. I apply this (belief) to myself, and to everybody else I work with. That's my advice for anybody who doubts why they're doing it. The difficulty is that some people have a voice that's more appealing. And there are songs, and there are songs. But there's no substitute for craftsmanship. It's all about crafting; the emotion will come out regardless."

The emotion on "Pieces in a Modern Style" is often submerged behind the sheen of gently undulating synthesizer textures and waves of glossy New Age-meets-ambient sound. To Orbit's delight, the album has sold so well in England that the estates of classical music icons Igor Stravinksy and Sergei Rachmaninoff have asked Orbit to make a sequel.

"I want to connect (pop fans) with these composers," said the 43-year-old maverick.

"I don't have a theory that people will just blindly get all the rest of these composers' work. You can't polish apples into oranges, and I don't have that urge to crusade that much. But I'd love it if people discovered these composers. And I want people to have their own search; get on the Internet and check it out."

Some classical-music critics have dismissed Orbit's adaptations as neo-Muzak, and bristled even more when his album's remix single of Samuel Barber's stately "Adagio For Strings" became a Top 10 hit on the English pop and dance charts. ("This album sold more in its first week in England than all of my Strange Fruit albums, combined, have sold in the world," Orbit noted.)

Pressure from the classical-music establishment in England led to "Pieces in a Modern Style" being disqualified from being ranked any longer on that country's classical music charts, which it had topped. The primary reasons cited for this narrow-minded move were that Orbit's album is "not suitable for live performance in a concert setting" and because "the tonal colors of the original works were totally altered."

"I've learned that the classical-music business is quite a minefield. I didn't know it was so controlled," said Orbit, a London native, whose parents often played classical music albums at home when he was growing up.

"I'm not an expert on classical music. But I do like the simpler, more melodic compositions, where the melody is the prime mover of the piece. And I do think of the orchestral textures and timbres. I actually released this album five years ago in England, with one more piece by (leading Estonian composer) Arvo Part. But he refused to let me do a version of one of his pieces, so we had to withdraw it. This (new) version subtracts two pieces, and adds five more by other composers.

"But I don't believe there is any artistic medium where it isn't possible to imprint your own touch. It's quite possible to imprint yourself on seemingly 'cold' synthesizers. I don't read music, but I love to invert chords, turn them upside down and inside out, and mess around with their internal structure. I do use a lot of (electronic) bleeps. I can't help myself - I like to bleep! But there's no reason why synths can't be distinctive."

Orbit chuckled when told that his approach to layering sound on "Pieces in a Modern Style" suggested he was a great admirer of pioneering German electronic band Tangerine Dream, in particular such Dream-y albums as 1974's "Phaedra" and 1975's "Rubycon." "Totally," he said. "I went to see them three times in London back then. There was something about the beauty of a wall of synthesizers and (electronic) cables. They had a load of gear behind them, and it looked so interesting, although I had no idea what it was about. It was the allure of this sexy equipment - I had no idea I'd end up doing this."

He chuckled again.

"I can't listen to Tangerine Dream's (recent) albums now, because they're boring. But I remember the last gig I saw by them in 1975. I was horrified that there was actually some guitar playing on stage! I was 18, and it really bothered me; it was the beginning of the end. But that's how I managed to come to where I am now, combining guitars and synthesizers. So it all comes around in the end."

(c) Copley News Service

Article continues below

---

advertisement

---

Author: George Varga