I’ve got a lot of music posts in the queue. Writing about music seems especially apropos at this particular moment because I’m about halfway through Killing Yourself To Live * and the Current just played the Electric Six’s cover of “Radio Ga Ga” and is now playing Lifter Puller and I’ve recently acquired a shit ton of good music and it’s my day off so I’m contemplating whether to crack open the incredibly fancy-looking bottle of incredibly potent-looking Mexican beer that Zeb gave me for my birthday.

So, I want to briefly discuss William Ørbit. (I’m also capable of discussing him not-briefly, so count your blessings.) He is a chillout/ambient pioneer who is doomed to being less famous than the people he produces (Madonna, Blur, Seal, Peter Gabriel, etc). Earlier this year he came out with an album that is in many ways a sequel to 1995’s StrangeCargoHinterland and doesn’t travel too far sonically from that album’s era or aesthetic blueprint. I consider this a good thing, since SCH is one of my desert-island discs.

This time around all of WØ’s trademarks are on display: the impossibly clean guitar tone, several tons of Moog, breathy female ooooos (Mr. Ørbit gave Beth Orton her first job) and a lot of that panning filter effect he uses all the time and that basically says You Are Listening To A Song Produced By William Ørbit Right Now. (What’s that called, Mark?)

Anyway, here’s a track from the newish album Hello Waveforms.

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(mp3)

* I cannot adequately describe the intensity of my suspicion that Chuck Klosterman somehow found a way to enter my brain and steal ideas from it. It’s the uneasy feeling one gets from being smack in the middle of a target demographic or readership: I’m not sure whether to be flattered or angry. Except he does it way better than I do, of course, and causes me to smack my forehead every few minutes by revealing a forehead-smackingly obvious yet insightful idea that I should have already thought of years ago, his “Kid A = 9/11″ thesis being a prime example.