William Orbit has just released new album The Painter, his first in more than eight years. The LP on the Rhino label features guest appearances by Katie Melua, Georgia, Beth Orton, Polly Scattergood and more.
Since William Orbit started making music in the 1980s, he has built up an incredible portfolio, dabbling in trance, ambient, classical and beyond, all while making huge hits for Madonna, All Saints, Blur and many more.
Here, the super-producer talks new music, metal and why Madonna was hard on him during the making of Ray Of Light...
Recording my new album was like doing a spot of actual painting…
“It was like going on holiday with an easel and some watercolours. I went back into my enormous archive and listened to stuff that was left by the wayside. I’m older now but, creatively, I feel like I did in ’96 to ’97 – not worrying about Spotify, or making a song two minutes long with no intro or outro. I decided to think about it in terms of being an album – right at the time when that’s not what you’re supposed to do. I thought, ‘Why don’t I just do something that could be played at someone’s house or on a car journey?’”
I started out with metal, and Metallica are probably my favourite band...
“People never talk about me as a guitarist; they talk about me as an ambient dude. I’m currently working on some Metallica tracks, just for the fun of it. [Metallica’s co-manager] Cliff Burnstein told me he’s not 100% convinced by Dolby Atmos, so I said to him, ‘Let me pick the track and I’ll see if I can convince you’, and I picked Enter Sandman. I mentioned this at a talk I did at Nottingham University and this student piped up and said, ‘That’s the worst track!’ I replied, ‘The worst track?! Right, you and me outside – we’ll have it out!’ We had a fierce debate, which was great, as I didn’t have to talk about my stuff.”
Getting the guitar out was always a temperature shifter with Madonna...
“She’d say things like, ‘Channel your angry teenager!’ She would really get producerly, and I’d get really performerly, which shifted the dynamic nicely. I’m someone who’s there consistently, which artists need. When you make a tune, you’ll be listening to it for a long time before playing it to others. When you do, without them saying anything, you hear it through their ears and know you need to change this or that. Madonna could be very hard on me, but I never took it personally. And although she’d say I’m slow, I’m quick.”
Madonna could be very hard on me, but I never took it personally
William Orbit
Making Ray Of Light nearly killed me...
“I can listen to Ray Of Light now, but I almost died at the end. It’s like nothing I’ve experienced before or since. If I’m squeamish about listening to records I’ve worked on, it’s the fear of hearing things I’d want to change, rather than the association with a tough time. But time helps, of course. When I was working with U2, I was sitting in the kitchen of their studio and Beautiful Day came on the radio. I said, ‘I love this!’ and everyone replied, ‘We can’t love this William – we lived it for a year-and-a-half – it’ll take us two years to love this song as much as you.’”
Having different producers for each track on pop albums says something...
“It would imply the power rests with the artist to pick and choose, rather than producers to go, ‘You’re lucky to have me.’ I’m a great fan of Dua Lipa and I think her phrasing is immaculate. I enjoyed Future Nostalgia, but I did want to know who produced each track. There’s one I particularly liked and I thought, ‘Oh, props to them.’ But then I thought they let a few wobblers through. Do I want to be involved with albums in that way? I can make my own album if I want to, so if I’m then drafted in to do one tenth of an album... I don’t mind. If I’m crass about it, a tenth of a hit is better than 100% of a flop.”
I played Gangnam Style at the Queen’s party at Buckingham Palace in 2015...
“I was asked so many times and I had to, it was a party! But the National Anthem had to be last. And because Her Majesty was in the house, not on the dancefloor but in bed, I had to play the whole thing. I loved it.”
