Orlando - "Passive Soul"

Colonel Blimp

Young Soul Rebel
The mid-1990's was a curious time for popular music.

The most ambitious outsiders had managed to take control of the mainstream thanks, for the most part, to the efforts of certain journalists to look for a homegrown alternative to the hideously pervasive "grunge" scene.

The sight of middle-class children wandering the streets of this once proud nation wearing plaid shirts and trying their very best to look like the worst possible sort of trailer trash was too much for me to bare...it was a horrible time. One couldn't move without being forced to look deep into the eyes of Kurt Cobain or his wife Ms. Love...can you imagine anything more horrible?

Fortunately the oft derided Britpop came along and provided us all with an excuse to start dressing well and having a gay old time of it...of course the whole thing was a media invention and ultimately turned sour thanks to Oasis and the arrival of "lad" culture.

As Britpop turned into Britpap Simon Price of Melody Maker decided that what was needed was to take the burgeoning underground New Romantic revival in Londons clubs overground...the result?

RoMo.

Romantic Modernism.

Pretty boys and pretty girls getting their rocks off to elctro-pop of the sort not heard since the Human League "Dare"d us to cut our hair in the most ridiculous fashion imagineable and get all "arty".

For the most part the entire RoMo scene was dreadful.

Bands like Plastic Fantastic were the equivalent of Menswe@r.

DexDexter had a wonderful name but no real songs to accompany it.

Viva!

Sexus.

Hollywood.

None of them amounted to very much.

The Melody Maker gave away a free RoMo tape..."Fiddling While RoMo Burns".

It wasn't very good.

One track, however, was beyond being simply "good"...it was astonishing.

The track in question was "Natures Hated" by OrlandO.

"I don't kiss and tell, I'm too fond of kissing"

What a line!

Morrissey would have been desperate for a line like that even at the peak of The Smiths powers.

The music was a glorious marriage of the Pet Shop Boys with Motowns Funk Brothers...electro-soul.

The accompanying RoMo tour was an utter disaster...I attended the Glasgow gig along with, perhaps, 20 other people. It felt a little embarrassing...until OrlandO took to the stage and held me spellbound with a set of songs each the match of "Natures Hated"

Their debut, and only, album "Passive Soul" is, quite probably, the best album released in the '90's...it stands alongside "Vauxhall and I" for lyrical majesty and, on occasion, betters it. With Suedes masterpiece "Dog Man Star" it is a true lost classic. For me it is the greatest album of that decade.

Lyricist Dickon Edwards had the ability to reduce me to tears in a single line; "I can't bare to be where there isn't you", "Just for a second, you lowered your defences and confessed what the world had guessed, deep down I fear, I might actually be, unremarkable", "So you lie afraid again, cos freedom brings only, half lives as half lived as ours".

Here was the natural heir to Morrissey...here was a band that you could believe in.

It wasn't to be of course.

In the hail of Oasis wannabes where even people who should have known better let themselves be swept along on the "lad" wave (hell, even JDB from the Manics produced an album for "Northern Uproar"!) there was no chance for something as beautiful and delicate as OrlandO to survive.

Dickon Edwards continues to record as Fosca and his online diary is a treasure trove of wonderful words.

"Passive Soul" a record to treasure.

Colonel Blimp.
 
orlando really were pretty good...

the whole romo thing was nauseating, and a dozen other negative descriptors. but orlando had something, even when they were still sort of annoying and tried a bit too hard.
definitely a pet shop boys influence there - i'd encourage anyone to seek out the album, but good luck...it's hard to find, and you might have to pay a bit for it...
 
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Anyone care to upload one of their songs? Heard good things about them before, but never heard of them.
 
Anyone care to upload one of their songs? Heard good things about them before, but never heard of them.

This is very self-indulgent but I wanted to resurrect this thread as I still believe that OrlandO deserve a bit of discussion.

Colonel Blimp
 
I had a bus journey home with the singer Tim when he finished shooting Pulp's "Miss-shapes" video at Hammersmith Palais.
Those were the days...
 
I had a bus journey home with the singer Tim when he finished shooting Pulp's "Miss-shapes" video at Hammersmith Palais.
Those were the days...

If rumours are to be believed Mr Chipping was not a very nice person.

Possessed of a wonderful voice though.

There was something so magical about Edwards and Chipping...I get quite cross thinking about some of the dross that managed to forge a career out of the mid-'90's music scene (hello Shed Seven and Cast) while people with a genuine gift simply faded into obscurity.

Colonel Blimp
 
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