YMMV / Orbital

• Fanon Discontinuity: Most fans prefer to pretend that the collaboration with David Gray, "Illuminate", never happened. Some would also deny the existence of the parent album, The Altogether.
• Genius Bonus: The album The Altogether has a picture of human skulls on the cover. "In The Altogether" is a somewhat archaic euphemism for "nude", and skulls are basically heads that are "naked" of flesh.
• Growing the Beard: Their first couple of albums did this for the techno genre.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A common complaint for their post-reunion albums is the lack of any compositions as epically long as their 90s material. Monsters Exist only has one song longer than the shortest song from In Sides—and Wonky doesn't have any. Shorter songs were also one of the reasons why The Altogether was so divisive at the time—but that album at least had "Meltdown" (11 minutes on the CD, and 28 minutes on the DVD version) to slightly placate the fans of longer compositions.
• Nightmare Fuel: The music video of "Halcyon" starts out with a mother (portrayed by Kirsty Hawkshaw of Opus III) doing the chores as a part of her routine (also implied that she's "under the influence") until she starts showing signs of Sanity Slippage such as hallucinating her two sons in unusual places (one dancing on the table and other in the cabinet under the sink before showing up in the sink). Then, a bald figure shows up and attemps to attack her while the mother fights back by draining the water, then she starts dancing in an erratic manner. And the video ends with the mother witnessing herself glaring at her before the definition of "Halcyon" and "Halcyon Days" is shown on the screen:
  Halcyon
  1) Peaceful, gentle and calm.
  2) Greek myth. A fabulous bird.
  3) Hypnotic sleeping pill. Side effects: a sense of detachment, possible psychosis.

  Halcyon Days
  1) A fortnight of calm during the winter solstice.
  2) A period of peace and happiness.
• Retroactive Recognition: A pre-fame Alison Goldfrapp provides vocals on the Snivilisation and In Sides albums.
• Signature Song: Probably "Chime", which is still played at every gig. Other possibilities include "Lush", "Halcyon", "P.E.T.R.O.L.", "Belfast" and "Satan".
• Song Association: "Halcyon + On + On" was notably used in several films, most famously the final scenes of Mortal Kombat: The Movie and Mean Girls.
  • Many WipEout fans would associate "P.E.T.R.O.L.", "Know Where To Run" and "Funny Break (Plump DJs Remix") with the original 1995 game, Wip3out and WipEout Fusion (while its Japan-exclusive remix from In Sides "P.E.T.R.O.L. (Final Drop Mix)" was featured in WipEout 2048).
  • Another remixed version of "Funny Break" by Weekend Ravers was also featured in Frequency (Harmonix).
• Tear Jerker: "One Perfect Sunrise", especially since it was supposed to be their swan song.
  • Also "Dwr Bdr". Even if you can't understand the lyrics the melody is very sad.
  • "Halcyon" (including its remix "Halcyon + On + On"), while sounding mostly euphoric, has a very melancholy undertone and gets even sadder when you find out the song was written about the Hartnolls' mother's addiction to Halcion sleeping pills.
  • "Belfast" is also a Tear Jerker, but is more of a happy one, especially considering it was inspired by the Hartnoll brothers' visit to Belfast in Northern Ireland and seeing how rave and acid house was uniting communities of young people divided by The Troubles.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The fandom rejoiced when it was announced Sparks would be collaborating on a track with Orbital. Then the result of that collaboration turned out to be "Acid Pants"—a decent acid-techno song on its own merits, but the extremely limited lyrics (just one line looped repeatedly, really) were a huge waste of Sparks' talents as witty lyricists.

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