Shoegaze in all its forms and permutations has a big soft spot reserved in my heart. Today’s premiere may not be of the shimmering, Slowdive-ean persuasion, but it brings enough effect-laden riffs and earnest songwriting with it to qualify. Orbiter are a Gainesville, Florida-based quartet indulging in the interplay between shoegaze, post-rock, sludge, and indie rock. As you will soon hear for yourself, the end result is a sound that reaches from deep-earth grit to the swooning stars above.
Distorted Folklore will be released on Friday, December 13 (that’s tomorrow!) via Salvaged Records. It’s the follow-up to 2022’s Head Wounds EP and sees Jon Reinertsen (guitars, vocals), Matt Walker (guitars), Jonathan Hamilton (bass), and Brad Purvis (drums) in exceptional form. Their concoction of styles and directions culminates in a satisfyingly weighty blend that could – and likely will – attract fans from across the spectrum inhabited by bands like Torche, Hum, and Nothing.
Recorded at Sound Artillery Studios with producer Jonathan Nunez (ex-Torche, funnily enough), this album may very well stand as an early-career highlight for this particular combo. You might’ve felt me shying away from the descriptor ‘up-and-coming’ just now, and that’s because all four members of Orbiter have a remarkable local scene pedigree. We’re not dealing with amateurs here – these are grizzled veterans about to make a name for themselves out here!
You can find a Soundcloud stream of Distorted Folklore below. Best to let the music do the talking before I go any deeper into this record and its numerous merits.
The members of Orbiter might have had some previous stations on their path to becoming a solid unit, and their sound draws obvious parallels to acts from different walks of music – you best believe their drive and passion are their very own, though. You can feel this in every measure of Distorted Folklore, in every overdriven fuzz riff and every twinkling atmosphere. This is what the band came to present to the world, and they absolutely own it.
Opening your record with a nod to Depeche Mode is seldom a bad idea, and “Safe as Houses” (read the lyrics to “Never Let Me Down Again” to catch that reference) does a splendid job at establishing the elements we’ll come to associate with Orbiter over the following 8 tracks: charmingly deadpan vocals, alternatingly weightless and crunchy guitars, and monolithic drum hits, amongst other assorted delights.
Cover artwork by Casey Donley
Dual leads pepper the main riff to “Time Rips”, as it rolls forward like a most elegant boulder set on its path towards obliteration. There’s a nice weight to Orbiter‘s music, without it feeling overencumbered or immobile. Theirs is an agile yet impactful way of playing, supported nicely by Nunez’ sympathetic production. Here and elsewhere, Reinertsen’s reverb-heavy vocals prove to be a major boon; he may not provide the most technically outstanding performance ever put to tape, but he’s consistently nailing the aesthetic this kind of music calls for. Earnest, impassioned, and self-assured, his voice is the core that every other element can safely float skyward from.
Other highlights include the spacey sludge of “Coil”, the emotional heft of “I’ll See You on the Backside of Water…”, or the epic proportions of “Svalbard”. Orbiter confidently toy around with a set roster of building blocks to assemble various similar but never identical structures. Distorted Folklore proves to be a carefully varied, aesthetically cohesive collection of tracks that can go toe-to-toe with any record in its extended ballpark without having to fear the comparison. Repetition does not always equal monotony, and Orbiter are the living proof.
I massively enjoyed my stay in Orbiter‘s, well, orbit (surely this will net me the next Nobel Prize in literature!) – Distorted Folklore is a meaty yet weightless record that will appeal to many people inclined towards the more psychedelic side of sludge/post-metal, as well as ardent fans of the ‘gaze. If you fancy yourself a last-minute pre-order, you can get one on Bandcamp. Be sure to follow the band on social media as well (Facebook | Instagram).
