Orbital – Orbital

Sounds soooo good!! Flat, perfect pressing. The marble effect is really cool. I’m so happy to finally spin this album!!! I ordered mine right off the Orbital website.

Just received a shipping update and a tracking number today from Rough Trade! Finally!

For my fellow American customers. 🇺🇸 I got a hold of a RT employee earlier this week. Spoke with a polite associate who was hired on specifically to mitigate some of the blowback from their recent system swap. He said they’re working hard to restore faith of longtime customers, and are hoping to look back on 2025 as the “year of the Shopify blip”, or something. Basically well aware that it’s been a shit-show with orders, checkout systems, shipping dates, long response times, etc.

At the time of calling, he confirmed that their total inventory is > orders placed, so it’s not a case of accidentally overselling stock. (Something I’ve recently had to deal with from them.) He mentioned there was a delay in getting the inventory to US stores, but ran out on the floor and confirmed they were selling copies of this variant. As such, he insisted that I’d have a tracking number next week and encouraged me to call him back and raise hell if I didn’t. Cool dude.

tl,dr; at least some of RT’s staff know how much of a clusterfuck the Shopify transition has been. For this particular exclusive, for US customers, stock has not oversold and shipment notifications should roll out by 6/6. If you’ve seen no traction on your order, you’re not alone.

Hope someone else finds this info handy. It should save you a call.

Has anyone in the US received this from Rough Trade yet?

Lovely vinyl, sounds dynamic and clear. Great to finally have this repressed.

Got mine signed by Phil and Paul to top it off! Very happy!

(Wish the sleeves were anti static though!)

My copy got absolutely annihilated by royal mail! in a bit of a quandry, if i send it back i won't get a replacement as it's sold out, i wonder if i can get a spare cover somewhere?

Obviously the music (which sounds great) is more important than the artwork, but it's worth saying that this is a really beautiful edition - the marbling ("galaxy vinyl", as it was d) is almost like an extension of the label design, and this LP restores the artwork that was lost on the 2015 repress, namely the anatomical diagram of the head and chest on the first inner sleeve.

A more subtle difference is the atomic swirl design on the inner sleeves, which on one of the two 1993 inners was partly airbrushed out to fit the text in the top right; on the 2015 press, this airbrushed sleeve had I think been scanned for use on both inners, so that neither had the full orbit design. On this one, the full orbit, complete with the missing streaks, is present on both inners. It's the kind of attention to detail - sourcing the original artwork - that often signals good things for the records themselves: someone obviously cared about getting this edition right.

Speaking of which, the two mastering errors on side two of the 2015 (fractions of a beat missing between each of the tracks) have also been fixed! And the whole thing just sounds fantastic. Extremely pleased with this.

Sounds perfect, marbling is subtle but perfectly colour matched to the album artwork. Exclusive to artist web store and Rough trade.

I see all the new 2025 versions being listed as "Remastered" - didn't the band specifically call out that it wasn't remastered as it "was perfect already"?

Bit dissapointing that the marble is not as vibrant on the mock-up, mines more of a muddy brown. However it plays silent (after a clean) and the dynamics are great.
Also pretty sure this version was available both from the official store (where I bought mine) and Rough trade... I guess someone can vertify the RT one is the exact same release.