In Sides is the fourth album by British electronic group Orbital, released in the UK on Internal on 29 April 1996.
[3] In Sides saw the band continue the process, begun on their previous album Snivilisation, of moving away from making music for the rave scene towards more intricately crafted melodies and reflective, downtempo tracks.
[1] The vocals on three of the album's tracks are credited to "Auntie", a pseudonym used by long-time collaborator Alison Goldfrapp on this release.
The vinyl re-release was a 4-LP box set, featuring the three LPs of the original release and a fourth LP with "The Saint" on one side and its B-side "The Sinner" on the other.
[12] It opens with an emulated heartbeat sound created with an ARP 2600,[13] which serves as bass and develops into what many critics hold as one of Orbital's most accomplished pieces.
It's not about UFOs, it's about that spiritual gap being filled by the aliens coming down to save us... Then the second half is the euphoria of what the person wants to feel when they've been abducted.
The collage for the internal artwork was created by Foul End Trauma, an anagrammatical alias for the design artists Fultano Mauder.
The leading UK dance music magazines Mixmag and Muzik were enthusiastic, with Mixmag saying that "Orbital are still light-years ahead of the competition"[24] while Muzik said that "billed as six unrelated 'sound scenarios', In Sides neatly illustrates why Orbital remain light years ahead of the competition.
While much of the album is set on a dial marked 'home listening', it is still some way in front of the soporific easy-listening muzak of much of today's ambient fare.
It refines their previous tricks further taking them into the realm of what now feels dangerously close to perfection, while also standing tall and utterly distinct from both its contemporaries and historic predecessors.
"[20] David Bennun of Melody Maker called In Sides "a very approachable record" and awarded it a "recommended" star rating.
He noted that the album was not as intense as its predecessors and said, "It strikes me as simply a sweet experience, an infusion of mild pleasure to the body and brain.
There's a newly mellow mood to these grandiose electronic vistas, but the brothers are stopping to admire the view rather than rest their aching bones.
But at their inspired best, as they are for a good three-quarters of In Sides, Orbital transport you to a glistening sensurround universe unlike anything else in pop.
[3] In The Guardian, David Bennun stated that "In Sides has a lightness and lucidity that is rare in the rather solemn world of dance music".
He described the work of the Hartnoll brothers as "a kind of sequencer origami, tucking their tracks into intriguing shapes" and that "the result is more than an intellectual exercise for the connoisseur of electronics.