Do you know what time it is? Have you got time? Is the time right, or is it out of joint? And how do you know if it’s time to change? Technology was supposed to free us from the tyranny of time - to emancipate us from the ticking clock, the blinking LCD. But it didn’t quite work out that way. The interconnected world means tighter schedules, endless rolling news, instant communication. What do you do when time renews its mastery...?

This question is at the heart of Paul Hartnoll's (until recently one half of Orbital) new album 8:58. 8:58 is also the moniker that Hartnoll is now going under.

The album opens with two tracks that, I'm assuming, are used to draw in Hartnoll's old Orbital fan base; they're very similar in style in fact, there's a reworking of Hartnoll's 2007 single 'Please', which according to the press notes is a rediscovered version of the original. Whether that means it was an old recording from Hartnoll's vaults, or it has recently been reworked, is unclear. There are already a tonne of remixes by various artists out there but, to me, this new mix is by far the best to date. It's odd because it sounds even more retro than the original, harking back to Orbital's heyday.

In fact I'd argue that this is where 8:58 works best: in the tracks that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a '90s Orbital album. On this album, that's '8:58'; 'Please'; 'The Clock'; 'Nearly There'; and 'Cemetery'. It's not just a 'vibe' these tracks give off. In the majority of the tracks the sampled sounds appear identical (in fact they probably are) to ones Orbital used in the '90s).

I've listened to this album almost constantly now for over a week and I was hoping that the other tracks would grow on me... but, sadly they haven't. I'm no nearer to liking them as I was when I first heard them. But that's fine, because the number of tracks here that I did love outweighs the number of tracks that you usually come to love on any album.

It's not that I didn't enjoy the other tracks, it's just that they sounded a little out of place. 'The Past Now', while beautiful in its own right just sounds a little too Medieval fantasy for my liking. Likewise, The Unthanks’s performance on ‘A Forest’, makes it just feel like a slightly off kilter Unthanks track. Which is fine, but just doesn't fit here. For me, it's the thumping, club tracks that work best here.

The album opens with the beautiful '8:58', which, once it gets going, reminded me of the standard montague music (but incredibly beautiful montage music) that teenage brat pack movies of the '80s used to adopt. I'd argue that this is the album's highlight, closely followed by 'Please'.

It's a damn fine album, certainly one that's worth adding to your collection.

9

Nick Smithson