Orbital mesmerizes in House of Blues

Geoff Carter

Friday, July 23, 1999 | 9:22 a.m.

I bought an Orbital T-shirt. The shirt's namesake techno outfit was near the end of its brilliant House of Blues set, driving the "Community Service Tour" -- also featuring Lo Fidelity All Stars and local heroes the Crystal Method -- to a frenzied, block party pitch.

Why I bought the shirt I cannot say. I'll probably never wear it; I own exactly two other concert T-shirts and I don't wear those, either. Compulsion? An autosuggestion episode, brought on by the dreamlike, elliptical rhythms and a lighting rig brighter than the P-Funk Mothership?

The reasons are irrelevant; what matters is that I thought I had bought a blue shirt, and when I got it out into the lights of Mandalay Bay's casino, it was purple. That changeling piece of purple cotton proved a fitting metaphor for the night: Nothing was quite what it seemed.

The Method's Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland, usually comfortable on their home turf, admitted to being nervous (and made a few minor mistakes to prove it).

Lo Fidelity All Stars started their set at 7:40 -- 20 minutes before the showtime listed on my ticket -- and were finished playing before I got there. And Orbital played above and beyond expectations, to the point that I cannot remember what my expectations were. That's how the group is -- it bends, it manipulates, it transmogrifies.

A thudding beat becomes a welcome form of hypnosis, and blue turns to purple. Orbital -- brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, two pairs of Pee-Wee Herman-style headlight glasses and a three-quarter walled synthesizer workplace -- are touring in support of "The Middle of Nowhere," a desolate record in name only. Nearly every track on the disc -- from the John Barry-esque "Way Out" to the shrill, ticklish "Style" -- is a pocket of warmth, but onstage, those same tracks heat to a boil.

"Spare Parts Express" and "I Don't Know You People" were big-hearted, awe-inspiring and funky as all hell. "Satan" put the proper fear and desire into the crowd, and "Halcyon" was as beautiful as always -- even with a cryptic, near-inappropriate breakdown featuring Bon Jovi and Belinda Carlisle samples.

Their presentation was stunning, as well. A series of striking, largely symbolic images were projected on six rectangular -- and rotating -- screens. The overall effect was one of steady, slack-jawed hypnosis, and I can't help but wonder if that's where the T-shirt command was slipped in.

Crystal Method was, as always, a head-bangin' delight. "Keep Hope Alive," "High Roller" and "Trip Like I Do" shook, shimmered and blasted in all the right places, and it is promising indeed to see the band's interaction with its audience improving with every show. In fact, any nervousness the band members might have felt early on was gone by the time they got around to the ready-made party anthem "Busy Child," and Kirkland did his standard wreck-the-keyboard shtick. It's always great to have the boys home, even on a working holiday.