William Orbit, StrangeCargoHinterland

Serveral months ago, in early April, I took the first nap of spring. I defined it as such using the following criteria: I was able to leave the window open without freezing, I didn't need covers on the bed, and while napping, I listened to an iTunes playlist which included the Sea & Cake's The Fawn, and Tortoise's TNT, and StrangeCargoHinterland by William Orbit. These three albums more or less constitute a holy trinity that define springtime for me�specifically the spring of 1998, about which you've already heard me wax nostalgic more than you'd probably prefer. To say that I have fond memories of this time is an understatement, even while nostalgia has of course ablated the bad elements from memory, as nostalgia is wont to do, so that the spring of '98�alongside many other springs, summers, winters, and falls�basks in the eternal sunshine of my not-quite spotless mind.

So gather 'round, children, and I'll speak of a time before iTunes, when taking a nap in the middle of the evening meant waking to a pile of neglected homework�reading for your Shakespeare class, an essay on Nietzsche for your religious studies seminar�with the open windows admitting a slight breeze charged with the odor of the paper mills' dross upriver from your northern Wisconsin campus, that smell you came to tolerate, if not quite enjoy, living in a single on the third floor of a hideous-looking seven-story high-rise dorm bequeathed by and named for the Kohler family, purveryors of fine faucets and bathroom fixtures the world over. You'd be a junior in college. You'd be confused. You'd be between girlfriends, or so you thought. You'd spend the afternoons skipping class and driving your recently-accquired, used, 1992 Nissan Sentra around the northwestern part of the city, among the stripmalls and freeways of a landscape blasted by the paper industry and a well-meaning midwestern work ethic, home of Joe McCarthy and Harry Houdini and, as legend had it, the creator of Perfect Strangers, trawling the used CD stores and scant few indie record shops and, when things were getting desperate, the big-box conglomoliths like Best Buy and Media Play (do they even still have Media Play?) for new musical discoveries. One such discovery, while flipping through Media Play's laughably understocked and misqualified "Dance Music" section, was a little album unremarkable in its outward appearance: a metallic gray cover design and only the words StrangeCargoHinterland across the front, the words all run together like that, and the only thing that stood out about the package was the fact that there was a track entitled, "She Cries Your Name". Could this be the same song as the beloved Beth Orton track that began her first solo album? Well, yes it was, though an earlier, more ambient, verseless version that was beautiful in its own right.

This is how I came to know William Orbit and his Strange Cargo imprint. This album, released in 1995, is an unofficial fourth entry in a series of Strange Cargos that began in the late-80s, and since I stumbled upon it at Media Play it's apparently become much harder to find. But I find it to be the superior of the four Strage Cargo entries, indeed of Orbit's entire oevre. This album defines that elusive crux where trip-hop, dance, and ambient intersect successfully. Perhaps there's no evidence�empirical or aesthetic�that I can introduce to prove that this isn't just another Pure Moods new wave experiment, seemingly indistinguishable from the Served Chilled series and Narada records and the French meanderings of Deep Forest. Perhaps the only reason this album rises above that oft-maligned, overcrowded, chillout-compilation subgenre of Enya Set to Beats�aside from the fact that Orbit spearheaded many of the early-90s dance genres�is the personal significance it holds for me. There. It was just in the right place at the right time, and I lapped it up. There you have it. But I've never played this album for anyone who hasn't found it agreeable, if not compelling.

There's hardly a weak track on this entire album, though I have my favorites. "Hulaville" is an uptempo, aerial tour of some alien utopia, the layers of synths somehow not sounding dated to our sophisticated 21st Century ears, these nine years later. "Kiss Of The Bee" is drenched in gurgling, otherworldly organ and the seductive cooing of female vocal harmonies over a slow reggae beat. It's perfect when the song dissolves a third of the way through and gives way to languishing guitar figures. That same tantalizing guitar returns at the beginning of "The Name Of The Wave" and is joined by meandering synth lines that are in no hurry to introduce the next section, fading in gradually with a slippery rhythm loop and more female vocals devoid of phonemes. But none of that really compares to "Crimes Of The Future", which obeys the unwritten law that an album's best track should also be its seventh. I know of few musical moments as gorgeous as the song's first minute and a half. The distant sound of thunder and the squiggles of an AM radio tuner introduce what should be boring, text-book chillout: a couple synth chords, spare acoustic guitar, the faint sound of a dub kick drum, the spare humming of that omnipresent, ethereal female voice. But in Orbit's hands it's all meticulously sculpted into something truly beautiful. Once the beats kick in, the song is not quite as transcendent, but that doesn't necessarily detract from the package. The chugging drum loop and insistent ride cymbal serve to enhance the ambient beauty created by the synth strings, acoustic guitar, and xylophone coasting alongside.

Fortunately for this music, and for me, StrangeCargoHinterland outlived my 1998 love affair with it and made its way into my desert-island album list. Music serves the unique, often double-edged role of transporting us to another time while at the same time enhancing and engaging us with our immediate present. I can make all the nostalgic playlists I want, but I know better than to try to re-create a season, or a memory. Nor would I want to.

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